


Live Incidentally

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2019, Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Coming Out, Depression, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Non-Youtubers AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24005110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: At thirty-two, Phil’s fine with this lot in life— manager for Printzoid, a flat he rents on his own in a relatively nice part of London, friends he sees at least twice a month for board game nights, an ex-fiancé he’s trying damn hard to get over, and a brother who means well even if Martyn doesn’t understand why Phil insists there’s a distinction between their father’s artwork being creative and Martyn’s music being creative and Phil’s novelty t-shirts being... not-creative.A fic about adulthood and opening up.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 564
Kudos: 330





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> endless, infinite, hearty thank yous to [keelin](http://ahappydnp.tumblr.com) not only for the months of hand holding, but also for the beautiful [playlist](http://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NJxiVGzX6ioyQsoAdOZgo?si=5tstBQZSSqS9-2TD87sSDQ) she made for me to write this fic to 🥰

“Has there ever been a bowling league that didn’t go for the _talent to spare_ pun?” Marge asks as she scribbles on the order form in front of her while half-listening to the voicemail. 

Phil laughs, “No, definitely not.” 

She tears the order form off its pad and starts on the next one. Phil tries to ignore how the sun is bouncing off the window of a car parked across the street. It seems laser-focused in on him, and he doesn’t need one of his bad headaches making this Tuesday— his Friday— even harder to drag his feet through. 

Marge doesn’t have any attemptedly funny observations about the rest of the messages. She clack-clack-clacks her short, slow clacks on the keyboard. Phil stands behind the counter and tries to see anything but the sun glare. 

Eight o’clock comes and goes; the shop has been open for forty minutes before anyone comes in. They’re picking up an order of ten aprons, black with a measurements conversion table printed on the front in white scrawled lettering. She’s nice, the customer picking up. She’s young and dressed in a blazer and wearing flats that look like fancy Toms, and the combination makes Phil think she’s probably someone’s assistant or something, and that’s why she’s so nice. Because it isn’t her errand she’s running, and therefore Phil and the print shop aren’t worth the effort of being anything but nice. Or maybe people can just be nice, even if he finds it hard to believe before 9 am. 

He steps over into their backroom to get a sweet, hazelnutty coffee from the Keurig. He needs the second coffee today, accelerated heart rate and accompanying anxiety from the caffeine be damned. The all-encompassing boredom is a bigger threat. 

That Keurig, for better or worse, is among his great joys in life. He’d fallen in love with the coffee maker when the vacation house his parents rented in Florida had one a few years ago. It was very American, what with the expensive and wasteful pods that he orders scheduled from Amazon in a shameful variety of flavours. He also likes that he can make just one cup at a time, instead of brewing an entire pot and being forced to choose between drinking it all or dumping it down the sink. That’s oddly a comfort, he philosophizes, when you’re single for the first time in five years: the guarantee of your own solitary steaming mug. 

Despite enjoying the fact that it makes a single coffee, the look on Marge’s face when she smells Phil’s mug as he walks by and the little, “Oh, something sweet?” she says with a voice which reminds Phil of his mum, convinces him to back over to the machine to make a second one just for her. 

By lunch, Phil’s so bored that he thinks about eating his own face. It would not only pass the time, but he’d almost certainly be able to leave work early. 

Not that he needs anyone’s permission. Despite being twenty-five years younger than Marge and decidedly less interested in screen printing as a trade, he’s the manager. In theory, he could leave. Wouldn’t need a real excuse either, even if the low-level migraine that’s been building all day is a good enough one. But he won’t. He knows he won’t. 

Besides, he reminds himself that he’d likely be just as bored at home. 

*

Screen printing had never been a hobby, and sometimes Phil wonders how in the world it became a career. But it has been his for close to a decade now, since he finished uni and got a job at the print shop ostensibly until he found some use for that degree. And, well... he knows a lot about the etymology of the different words for the different dyes they use and he updates the graphics to the store’s website every quarter. Other than that his degree in English Language and Linguistics and Masters in Video Post-Production don’t get a lot of use. 

He’d let the bitterness seep out of his bones in his late twenties. 

Now at thirty-two, he’s fine with this lot in life— manager for Printzoid, a flat he rents on his own in a relatively nice part of London, friends he sees at least twice a month for board game nights, an ex-fiancé he’s trying damn hard to get over, and a brother who means well even if Martyn doesn’t understand why Phil insists there’s a distinction between their father’s artwork being creative and Martyn’s music being creative and Phil’s novelty t-shirts being... not-creative. 

Maybe his degrees are a little too rusty. He can’t think of an actual antonym for creative. 

Whatever it is, that’s what taking phone and online orders of basic block letter messages or a blurry photo taken on someone’s iPhone that Phil does his best to make renderable is. It’s the same level of creativity as a woman behind the bakery counter at Sainsbury’s icing the requested _Happy Birthday Jeremy!_ on a sheet cake next to a big frosting football. None at all, really. 

The hours are fine, the pay is decent, the customers are nicer than at the stationery shop he worked at in uni (either because they actually were or simply because Phil has grown up) but it isn’t the creative path that his childhood and teenage hobbies had set him up for. 

He’s not sure if it actually doesn’t bother him, or if he just tells himself it doesn’t bother him. 

And he figures that unsureness is closer to happiness than a lot of people get; it’s pretty fucking close to contentment. Therefore, it must be good enough.

Martyn calls him during lunch to ask if he won’t reconsider going to Florida with the family in August. Martyn’s made it a habit of doing so once a week. Phil wants to reconsider. He always loves a family holiday. And there’s nothing stopping him from going except his own stubbornness. Because he was originally going to miss Florida for the sake of his honeymoon. He was originally going to be spending three weeks in Greece and now he’s going to be spending three weeks in his still unfamiliar flat trying to forget… whatever it is he can’t manage to forget. The sound of his mum’s “Oh, child,” when he told her, or the look on Brandon’s face when he took off his ring, or the feeling in his stomach when he remembers that this is what he wanted even if it’s hard to remember why. 

The afternoon is better. That’s when Marge is done for the day and goes to pick up her granddaughter from school and they stop in to wave on their walk home, and Hannah arrives to work the counter until closing while Phil is in the back actually filling the orders. 

Even if he doesn’t exactly love his job, he does love this part. He loves the tactility of it. He loves what he can clearly hear the voice of his professor for Rhetorics of Everyday Texts call, “the creative act of making.” There may be nothing creative about the words he’s printing to t-shirts, but there’s still ink under his nails by the end of the day and bundles of finished orders and it just feels good to have made something, _anything_ , start to finish. 

It’s been a while since he did that, outside of the very specific confines of the print shop. It’s been such a long while that he doesn’t really remember when or why he stopped. 

Just like he doesn’t really remember when or why he got so bored. When or why he committed to blowing up his engagement. When or why he decided to lean into his distinction as the bad son. 

Sometimes he looks at his life and thinks he’s in the most stripped-down version of _13 Going on 30_ , that he woke up in an adulthood he thought for sure that he wanted but which he doesn’t remember acquiring and which all of his context clues tell him he got to through questionable means. He doesn’t think he was profusely bored as a teen… as a uni student. But he also doesn’t think the intermittent decade between uni and now ought to be so easily condensed like cellophane into a noisy little ball. All he knows is on the other side, here and now and the life he’s stuck in, he’s bored. 

Being bored is not the worst fate. He tries to remind himself that, all things considered, it’s very likely he’s happy. Or content. Or getting by. Which, again, is good enough. 

At closing time, Hannah pops her head into the back. “Join us for a drink?” she asks, “Me and my friends. Jenascia will be there. Adam too.” What she doesn’t say is that Brandon won’t be there. She doesn’t have to: the fact that she’s asking him to come along at all is enough to say so for her. 

Hannah’s been trying to get him to be social since the breakup, and he has been too awkward to say no a handful of times. He knows she means well. He knows she was friends with Brandon first and that she feels a weird sort of responsibility because she introduced Phil to him years ago— the flip side of the sort of responsibility she teased she would brag about in her wedding toast, back when everyone thought there would be a wedding. He knows as much emotional effort as he and Brandon are putting into trying to stay friends, or at least friendly, Hannah is putting in twice as much as the two of them combined. 

And he doesn’t have the patience for it today. No particular reason, it was just an impossibly hard day. The thought of being anywhere tonight other than curled up on his sofa with his Switch and another coffee is enough to make him want to scream. 

It occurs to him, in the seven seconds it takes for him to say, “No, maybe next time,” and for Hannah to look unsurprised but disappointed by his answer, that he’s not all that sure when he last screamed. Like a loud, righteously angry shout. 

He’s sure there’s something there, in that cellophane ball of his twenties. 

At the very least, he must’ve done more than gasped when on a roller coaster. Somewhere, sometime. 

He opens the door to his flat and is surprised to find the lights are off. All these months later and it still surprises him that the lights are off. Brandon had always gotten home before him in the evenings. Phil used to open the door to lights on and a candle burning and the sound of news radio playing from their terrifying Alexa. He was not sorry to see that go when they’d split up possessions. Phil wants to have some sort of chance surviving the robot apocalypse, and feels it’s pretty obvious he’s not going to if he has a Bezos-issued spy in his home. 

He forgoes the coffee for a glass of red wine which he fills too high so he won’t have to get up off the couch as frequently. Unlike coffee which gives him physical anxiety while drinking it, anxiety from wine doesn’t hit him until morning. It’s a worthwhile gamble at the time, he thinks. 

He says hello to the houseplant sitting on his breakfast bar. 

He’d considered getting a pet once he was living on his own for the first time in his adult life, to help the place feel less devoid of other life, but didn’t trust himself to keep it alive. Didn’t trust himself to know which pet to get. Didn’t trust himself not to call Brandon in tears the first time the theoretical dog would get into some food they shouldn’t get into or the first time the theoretical hamster wouldn’t come out from under the bed or the first time the theoretical bird’s feathers went crooked for some reason. 

When the houseplant’s tips get a little too crispy or brown, he thankfully has no urge to call anyone. He just waters it, shifts it a little closer to the sunlight. Maybe googles it later. 

When Phil rolls into bed at nearly 2 am with burning eyes from staring at a screen for the last handful of hours, his bones ache and he wonders how he could be so tired considering he spent most of the day in his own head rather than actually doing anything at all. He’s feeling warm from the wine and as he lays on his back, the room is spinning just the slightest bit. Not enough to make him feel ill, which is a miracle considering he gets travel sick sitting in a car too long. Just enough to feel like he’s being rocked. 

He considers having a wank. He decides his limbs are all too heavy. He isn’t sure when he actually falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/617203287342678016/live-incidentally) !


	2. Chapter 2

Phil’s two days off pass by too quickly. They always do. He’s back behind the counter listening to Marge clack away before he knows it, the Friday in May lovely from what he can see from the windows. 

London is sunny, but not yet too hot. Much nicer than the last few days which were cloudy, and Phil wants to be annoyed by the nice weather turning up just in time for him to go back to work, but it’s not like he actually left the house the last two days. 

He didn’t do much of anything. 

He ordered takeout twice, looked up showtimes for the new _Toliekn_ biopic then decided he didn’t want to bother getting dressed for it, scrolled through his phone, and played so much _Breath of the Wild_ that he’s wearing his glasses today in an attempt to apologize to his eyes for all the strain. Three times someone called him, and that was enough socialization as far as he was concerned.

The first was Bryony, calling to ask what dish he’s bringing next Friday. They combined the board game nights with a potluck a few years back and Phil has always brought the same thing— a simplified version of his mum’s German apple cake because it’s one of the few things he can manage to bake without making his kitchen look like a warzone. And since Bryony knew full well that’s what Phil intended to bring, he wasn’t all that surprised when she then went on to ask something he’d been hoping she wouldn’t bring up. 

“Hey, by the way,” she said, “that guy from my office was asking about you. Want me to give him your number?” 

Phil sighed, and dramatically enough that Bryony hadn’t pushed any further. Just laughed and said she had to go. That guy from her office was nice enough, but Phil likes that unless Bryony gives in, he has no way to get ahold of Phil. 

That guy had been an attempt by Phil to rinse Brandon out of his system. An awkward flirtation after picking up Bryony from drinks with her work friends, followed by a brief and only half-finished hookup. Phil understood the logic behind getting over someone by getting under someone else, but the reality of the moment had been a little much for him. 

Everything lately seems to be a little much for him. 

The second call was Hannah asking for next Monday and Tuesday off. He told her to put a sticky note next to the calendar at work but that it was probably fine. He doesn’t have the energy to get annoyed about being called for these little things on his day off. He feels somewhere in the back of his head that he _should_ , but he doesn’t. 

Then Hannah called a second time to say that some woman had mixed up the desired pickup date for her order and would actually be in London tomorrow. Phil asked Hannah to describe the order, vaguely remembered having made it, and told her so. 

Before she hung up Hannah abandoned her work voice and brought out her friend voice. “Get up to anything on your days of freedom?” 

“Not really,” Phil said. That’s when it occurred to him that she’s probably been calling him to check up on him or something. Not because the print shop simply can’t run without him there. 

“Nothing at all?” 

“Just relaxing,” he told her. “And I’m gonna get back to it, so see you tomorrow.” 

Phil hates talking on the phone. His friends might be looking out for him, but they should know calling him up is among the worst ways to do that. 

*

“You’ll like this one, caffeine lad,” Marge says with a laugh, breaking Phil out of his own head. He looks over at the computer screen to see an order for a t-shirt with an illustrated cup of coffee and the phrase _It’s a brew-tiful day!_ in a loopy font. 

Phil cracks a smile. He does like it. The puns are the greatest benefit of his job; he realised back at the very beginning. 

They both look up as a whirlwind of a woman comes through the doors, ushered in as a wave of foot traffic passes the shop and battling with her two big tote bags which both seem intent on dragging her to the ground. She’s fiddling with the phone in her hand, brushes her hair out of her face, and smiles a weary sort of smile. Phil’s a little more tired just looking at her, but the smile helps even if it is weary. 

“Hi,” she says, “I’m picking up.” She tucks her phone into one of the pockets outside her bag, then digs through another. “Can’t seem to find my slip, I’ve been looking the whole way here.” 

“No worries,” Phil says, clicking through the screen of outdated software on the shop’s computers. “Name?” 

“Karen Howell,” she says. “It’s a shirt.” 

Phil shuffles through the completed orders. “Teal, with the slogan ‘Team Dan Proud Mum’?” 

“That’s the one,” she smiles again, less weary this time. It’s an easy, dimpled smile. 

“I’ll grab it,” Marge offers, already halfway to the back. 

“It’s already paid for, so we’ll have you on your way shortly,” Phil says. “Would you like a copy of your receipt?” 

“No,” the woman laughs, “I’d lose it immediately. I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed on tight. Seriously… I even mixed up the days for when I’d ordered it and thought I’d be in town _tomorrow_ so the fact that you have it ready for me is amazing, thank you.” 

“Oh, we’re happy it was ready.” Phil can hear the voice of his worksona coming out of his mouth— the polite, adult persona who isn’t bored of being here already. 

“This place is great,” Karen leans against the counter. “You’ve saved my ass before for Christmas when I didn’t know what to get my boys and ordered some shirts with the family dog on them.” 

“Bet they loved that!” Phil is picturing himself at five or eight or however old this woman’s boys are and how much he would’ve loved a shirt with a picture of Holly his rabbit on it, let alone a dog if he’d ever been lucky enough to have one. 

“Well, they pretended to, and that’s all a mum can ask for.” 

Marge emerges from the back with the wrapped item under her arm. She hands it over with a gentle smile. Seems the shop is nothing but smiles today. Phil should find that pleasant, right? Instead he questions if they’re all fake, or just his? 

“Thank you, really,” Karen says as she stuffs the shirt into one of her bags. “My oldest got the mad idea to run in the London marathon and I want him to know that even though it’s… well, _unexpected_ , that I’m quite proud of him.” 

That new information changes Phil’s mental image of the woman’s children, since he’s got to be at least an adult to sign up for the marathon. It makes the thought of the family dog shirt a little more charming, but also a little more disconnected. The woman is clearly trying. It just isn’t clear how successful she’s been. 

Phil wishes her son luck, keeps the smile painted on his face until she steps out of the shop, and drinks what is left of his coffee though it has long gone cold. His degree is going to waste again because he knows there’s a word which exists for how he’s feeling, only he can’t think of it. It’s not exactly bored though that’s the shorthand he’s been working with for months. It’s not exactly sad, although the feeling makes him sad. As though that makes any sense. 

It’s like he’s only recently become aware of the fact that he’s just going through the motions. 

Another customer comes in and the interaction is almost identical to the one which just occurred with Karen Howell. Only they didn’t look so haphazard and did want a copy of their receipt, and they were picking up three shirts and didn’t bother to tell Phil anything about what they’re for. So quite different, when the details are laid out. But similar enough in that people entered the shop, and people left. And they continue that way— day in, day out. The world moves on around him.

*

He takes orders with toucan puns and snowman puns and wine puns. He buys an everything bagel and wonders what the _everything_ could possibly consist of if only the bakeries were brave enough. He dodges another invite from Hannah as they close up shop. For once, though, she doesn’t seem ready to let him off easy. 

“You never hang out anymore,” she says, with a theatrical little pout. 

“Just tired,” Phil shrugs.

“You really are old.” She has the smug grin of a twenty-nine year old on her face when she says it, playing with the necklace at her throat. Then she stops by the light switches and leans against the wall before turning them off. “It’s not, like… it’s not me, right?” 

Phil hates the shake in her voice when she asks that, even if he doesn’t know exactly what she means. “What?” 

“You’re not avoiding me, right? Brandon won’t be there, so you’re not avoiding him. And I just really miss you. And I know things feel like shit lately, but I want to help them feel less shit.” 

Phil’s glad the lights are already shut off and that neither of them can really see the other’s face since the only illumination they’re getting is from the streetlamp outside the window. Because he doesn’t want Hannah to see the surprise he knows is painted on his face and mistake it for something else. 

“No,” he says quickly. “No, it’s not you.” It’s true. He doesn’t grudge Hannah for anything, except maybe her boundless energy which he simply can’t relate to. 

“Good,” she says, grabbing her bag from behind the counter. “Good.” 

“I’ll stop being so flaky,” he wraps an arm round her shoulder. “Next time.” 

That seems to satisfy her. It’s more than he’s promised in a while. 

And the whole walk home, he manages to believe it himself. Believe that he’ll be more present, be a better friend. Believe that he’ll start meal planning and tidy the flat when he gets home and maybe purchase a few more plants to brighten up the lounge. Believe that he’ll go through his closet and donate the things he hasn’t worn in a while. Believe that he’ll call up Martyn and tell him he’s changed his mind about Florida. Believe that he’ll start writing in that blank book he bought as a journal months ago and hasn’t touched since. Believe that he’ll take up exercise and meditation and whatever else Buzzfeed listicles tell him is advanced self-care for adults who are good at adulting. 

He believes it when he gets to the front door of his building. He believes it as he climbs the three flights of stairs. He believes it when he turns on the lights that still surprise him by being off. 

Then the supreme gravitational pull of the sofa seems to latch onto him.

He lays down and tries to straighten out his spine and sighs. All those grand, lofty plans… they seem so easy for so many people. And an impossible bother to him right now in this moment. Even a shower, though he needs one, seems like too much effort. Even dinner, though his stomach is rumbling, seems like more trouble than it’s worth. 

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t actually remember closing them. The room seems oddly bright. Too bright. He checks the time on his phone— nine o’clock. 

He has a little moment of panic where he sits up on the sofa too quickly and his head throbs at the movement. Then he realises the windows are dark, and that’s what is unsettling. It’s 9 pm, he hasn’t missed work and he hasn’t missed anything at all. Just the chance at going to sleep at a decent time, now that he’s awake and the surge of anxiety when he misinterpreted the time is going to ensure he stays that way for a few hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/617476389495603200/live-incidentally) !


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m worried about you.” 

“Don’t be,” Phil shrugs. 

Bryony isn’t happy with that answer. She’s cornered him in her kitchen when he stood to grab a water because the cocktail someone made him back when he first arrived for board game night is sitting heavily in his stomach. She’s standing in the doorway and is giving him that stare which says they’re having this conversation whether or not Phil is up to it. He knows that stare too well; they’ve been friends for a long time. When Bryony doesn’t want to let Phil get away with his shit, he ain’t getting away with it. 

“I talked to Mason. Bullied him into talking about what went down a few weeks ago.” Her arms are crossed and her tone is inscrutable. Phil doesn’t fully understand if he’s meant to be on the defensive right now or not. 

“I didn’t know you wanted the dirty deets so bad,” Phil says, as though Bryony hasn’t been asking him what happened from the moment he left the bar with her coworker. 

“He wasn’t an easy nut to crack.” 

The _that’s what she said_ is on the tip of Phil’s tongue, and if this were 2012 he’d probably say it out loud. As is, he bites it back. “No?” 

“Nope.” 

“But did he?” Phil knows that if the guy didn’t actually spill, he can avoid telling Bryony everything like he has been doing. This confrontation has fallen into a question of whose poker face is going to fail first.

And Phil’s nervous. Bryony rarely fails at anything. 

“You sucked him off,” she offers, raising an eyebrow like she’s hoping Phil will confirm her information. 

He nods. That much is true, after all. 

“You cried.” 

“I didn’t _cry_ , jeeze Bry!” 

“He said you did.” 

“Well, I left pretty quickly.” He places the glass of water on the counter with a little more precision than necessary. He leans back and rubs his hands on his face and wonders how the hell he got roped into having this conversation. “He must’ve thought I did, or something.” 

“Must’ve been a pretty good blowjob if the bloke thinks you cried and ran away and he still wants me to give him your number.” 

“What can I say? I’m good at what I do…” 

That gets her to laugh. Thank god. 

She opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of wine. It’s probably, Phil thinks, the excuse she used for coming in here, and a signal that he’s almost free. 

“That why you’re worried about me? You think I’ve been crying during sex?” 

“I’m worried for a lot of reasons,” she says, a little too softly for Phil’s liking. He’s realized lately that he isn’t exactly good at talking about what he’s feeling. Go figure. “But that was one, yeah. Just didn’t seem promising, your first lay after Brandon and you cry your way through it.”

“Again, not what happened.” 

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “Still not a good look, right? Gotta get someone new in your system eventually.” 

“What sounds more appealing to you?” Phil snaps, a combination of sarcasm and annoyance making him a little meaner than he wants to be. “A string of Grindr hookups, increasingly disappointing speed dating, or glitter night at the gay club where I decide 32 is the perfect age to give in and try party drugs.” 

She shrugs. “All pretty bad ideas.” 

He isn’t sure why, but the next thing he says isn’t fair to anyone, especially himself. “What if I call up Brandon and have a cheeky backslide? It’s not exactly what you wanted but I’d definitely cry during it.” 

That seems to stump her. “Phil…” 

He runs his hands through his quiff now. The kitchen is too tiny and enclosed and he feels like a cornered cat. “Just don’t worry, okay? I feel bad enough without also feeling guilty because I’m worrying you.” 

“Can’t help it,” she says. “Friend’s job to care.” 

That’s true, he’ll give her that. “It’s just that my sex life is something I prefer to worry about on my own.” He can hear his own words echoing back at him, not actually but through ticker tape in his head. He can feel the dullness of his tone, the way they don’t even sound like words that came from him at all. 

Bryony looks a little unsure for a moment if she wants to say anything else. She focuses on uncorking wine and huffs out a quick breath. She reiterates, “I’m worried about things other than your sex life, y’know.” 

“Don’t be,” Phil says, and he feels like he’s right back at the beginning of the conversation. 

*

Phil spends the tube ride home ruminating over why he’s such a shit friend. Hannah, Bryony, his brother— he can’t let them in due to some completely arbitrary and unhelpful regulation he’s set up in his mind. And they _want_ to help him, that’s the worst of it. They say it all the time: “We’re here for you. We care about you. We’re worried about you.” And he just feels worse and worse.

He almost thinks he’d feel better if they up and yelled at him. It would at least be him getting what he feels he deserves, after all. 

If he had some good news to share, he’d share it. But his life is all beige monotony. He doesn’t want to bother sharing that. The last real news he shared with any of them was “Hey, I’ve ruined everything with the man who was supposed to be the love of my life and sent him packing.” Seems fitting that he doesn’t want to complain to them about the daily ins and outs of his blue moods. For some reason, he feels like they didn’t sign up for that. As though having friendship is something one signs up for, with terms and conditions no one bothers to read before clicking through. 

He’s zoning out, staring straight ahead, when he realizes someone has been trying to catch his eye. A cute someone. With a manbun and wide smile and a gaze that Phil sees wandering. They’re sat across from each other in a surprisingly calm car, not too many people packed in and Phil can hear him easily enough when he says, “Great jumper. Where’d you find that?” 

“Thanks,” Phil says. He answers, “Topman,” without even thinking about it, because that’s where 80% of his clothing comes from. 

“Looks soft,” the guy smiles wider. 

“It’s not,” Phil says honestly, rubbing the arms. “Itches like crazy.” He’s got a t-shirt underneath to protect his torso, but his arms have been dealing all night with the scratchy material and by now they’re furious with him. 

He pulls out his phone and sees a text from Bryony which boils down to asking if they’re good. Of course they are, Phil thinks, and tells her so. When he looks up again the cute someone is still staring, though the smile has dropped. Phil realises a bit too late that he’s been a real prat— he’s been rude and self-absorbed and he’s blown any shot at a meet-cute that he might have had. But before he has time to be too bothered by it, they slow at his stop. 

He avoids eye contact with the stranger as he steps out. 

*

Phil wakes up during his day off on a sunny Thursday in May to a string of phone alerts that immediately panics him. He wasn’t expecting to see that name pop up on his screen. He wasn’t expecting to see it eight different times for two missed calls and six text messages.

He hesitates before opening the messages. He’s living for a while in Schrödinger’s crisis— as long as they’re unopened he can pretend they aren’t too bad, or hell so long as he’s dreaming he can pretend they aren’t bad at all. 

Until he opens them, they cannot harm him. Until he opens them, that old wound is still scabbed over. 

So he sits up in bed and runs his fingers through his drooping quiff. He stretches until his spine pops and stands up and makes his way to the kitchen. He makes a coffee and some toast. He opens the windows in the lounge. He eats slowly. Very slowly. He brushes his teeth and showers and nearly convinces himself to go for a walk before deciding he’s avoided this enough. 

Now there are three missed calls, a voicemail, and eleven text messages. 

He’d jump to the terrible conclusion that one of his family members had died in some horrible accident or something, based on the message volume alone, if it weren’t for the fact that he’d trust Martyn to be the one reaching out to him in that case. And the second-tier tragedy would be something wrong with the print shop except then it would be Hannah reaching out to him. 

But no, Brandon’s name on the caller ID means this isn’t an external— family or finances or work— problem at all. It’s just the problem he’s been shoving aside for months: the problem of his bruised heart and a decision that he doesn’t regret making even if everything has felt like shit since he made it. 

He sits on the sofa and the phone feels heavy as a brick in his shaking, clammy hands. 

There’s a quick debate he has with himself about whether he wants to listen to the voicemail first or read the texts. He avoids having to choose by opening his web browser and typing, “flip a coin” and committing to the voicemail because it landed on tails. 

He pauses it three seconds in, because Brandon’s voice cracking on the single syllable of, “Hey,” is too fucking much for him. He stands and shakes the nerves out of his shoulders and tries a second time. 

“Hey,” Brandon’s cracked voice says again, “I’m sorry. I’m stupid. I was drunk. Please ignore those texts. Please, Phil. Fuck. I was drunk and stupid and shouldn’t have texted you. I’m sorry. Bye.” 

He spoke stilted, half-tearful, a voice Phil knew but hated having to hear. He sounded scared, or embarrassed. 

He sounded so fucking far away. Lightyears— lifetimes. 

Phil doesn’t know what to call the emotion that’s coursing through his veins so viscerally that he feels ill. His mind jumps to a few conclusions about what Brandon might’ve texted. Maybe something like that cheeky backslide he’d snarked about to Bryony a few weeks back. Maybe some rude messages finally telling Phil what he thought of his mum. Maybe a ranking, detailed list about all the ways Phil wasted what were supposed to be the best years of his life. Maybe nothing so melodramatic, but then why such a melodramatic voicemail? 

He opens the messages app, prepared for the worst. The day was shot to hell the moment he first read Brandon’s name anyways, he figures. He doesn’t really have anything left to fear.

“ _we should’ve fucked in your parents conservatory that one time during the rain storm_.”

“ _just tried something similar_.”

“ _pretty fucking good_.” 

Phil’s not sure why he wasn’t expecting this— something mean but a little sentimental that makes it sting all the more. That’s kinda Brandon’s style.

There are two hours between those messages and the next. 

“ _Don’t know why I’m texting you about my bloody conquests tho_ ” 

“ _Oh, that’s right. Because I can_.” 

That’s a little meaner than Phil could have expected, but Brandon was drunk after all. And Phil’s been mean himself at times, over the years. 

Nearly an hour later, he’d sent the harshest slap. 

“ _You should return the favour and tell me about yours. Come on philly, what calibre of ass you been pulling since you set me loose?_ ” 

Then came the gap of time where he’d apparently sobered up, called Phil a few times, left the upset voicemail, and texted a stringed combination of “ _fuck_ ” and “ _sorry, seriously Phil that was so shitty I’m sorry_ ” and “ _I won’t text you again, just ignore this please_.” 

He feels rotten reading them over. He feels sucked into something spiteful and juvenile and punishing. He feels both like this isn’t the Brandon he fell in love with years ago, texting drunken petty things, and also precisely what he should have been expecting for months now. 

They’re not horrible messages. That’s maybe the worst of it. Things would feel simple if Brandon texted him hateful things. They’re just… messages an ex-fiancé shouldn’t be sending. Especially one that’s done a good job of keeping his distance since everything fell apart. 

Brandon’s been doing such a good job of keeping his distance, in fact, that it explains the ghost of him that’s been hanging around Phil. The ghost of him that isn’t rooted in anger or longing, but is always in his peripheral vision. This slew of messages is so inconveniently human that the ghost seems superfluous now. Phil looks around and simply doesn’t see it. As though the messages were a pin and the ghost a balloon. A metaphor within a metaphor. 

He takes a shower but still feels rotten afterwards, which makes sense. The feeling is coming from inside. 

Heating up a box of leftover Indian takeout, Phil has what he is going to generously consider an epiphany. He deletes the texts and voicemail from Brandon. He deletes his number. He wonders why he didn’t do it ages ago. He texts Hannah and asks her if she’s free after work. 

She calls him half a second after her read receipt pops up. “Hell yes!” she laughs. “You mean it?” 

“Could use a drink,” he says, hoping it sounds like the fun kind of needs-a-drink and not the mauldin kind. 

He’s tired of punishing himself for a decision he made nearly a year ago. A decision he doesn’t regret but which he’s been forcing himself to feel bad about. He’s tired of everything feeling so heavy and hard. Deleting his ex-fiancé’s number and getting an overpriced cocktail with a coworker won’t magically fix that. But he thinks maybe if he throws enough chaotic energy at the wall, surely something will stick. 

He says he’ll meet Hannah at the print shop around closing. Her squeal of delight is honestly almost worth the exhaustion he’s already pushing back against.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/617848705372078080/live-incidentally) !


	4. Chapter 4

Phil is pulling out the items expected to be picked up tomorrow and wrapping them up. He’s checking along the list of numbers and names when one pops up that seems oddly familiar. 

Now, Phil knows that when you look at lists of names day after day, they’ll all start to look a little familiar. Even in a millennial craving for originality by tacking extra y’s to names where they don’t belong, there’s only so many arrangements of twenty-six letters that can happen before they all roll into one big blob. But the name Karen Howell stands out in a solid way, the kind that makes him think it’s familiar for real, and that he’s seen the name recently. 

Pulling out her order, it’s easy enough to remember why. She’s had the print shop make up a second t-shirt with the same saying as before printed on it: _Team Dan Proud Mum_. 

This time the t-shirt is white and the lettering rainbow. 

Phil wonders what the hell marathon that colour scheme is for. Maybe, he thinks, Karen Howell’s son is into martial arts— somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks he remembers something about a rainbow belt. It’s either the easiest one to get, or the only thing more advanced than a black belt. That, or he’s made it up entirely. 

Either way, he doesn’t remember having made this particular shirt. It must’ve been done on one of his days off.

A shame, really. He loves getting to do rainbow images and lettering. A mess of coloured inks, and his job to make sure they don’t all bleed into brown. 

Hannah is sitting on the counter with her phone in her hand and her bag in her lap, Phil knows. She’s completed all her closing duties and is just waiting on Phil to finish up because he’s agreed to grab a bite to eat with her. A bite to eat specifically: when they’d gone out drinking last week he had more than he bargained for and paid dearly for it the next day. So tonight it’s a nearby burger joint he’s agreed to, where the worst choice he can make is the milkshake he’s most definitely going to have. He’ll pay for that just as dearly, but it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. 

Phil lingers in the back for an extra handful of seconds. He just wants some deep breaths. There’s nothing exhausting about eating greasy food he enjoys and spending time with a friend he loves. But, fuck, is he exhausted already. 

Still, he’s determined to try. 

He read somewhere once that it takes 21 days to form a habit. He’s only on day nine of not trying to be a recluse. So it’s going to be exhausting. 

His deep breaths smell of ink and paint and chemical. Comforting after all these years, even if he’s pretty sure each inhale is killing brain cells. 

*

Karen Howell enters the shop the same as she did last time, blown in by the breeze. Phil is feeling slow and sluggish this morning despite two coffees and something about her entrance wakes him up. She has her easy, dimpled smile spread across her face and Phil wonders if she recognizes him that well or if she’s simply that good at projecting a genuine smile. At doing so without any discomfort behind the eyes, something he knows he’s never quite mastered. 

“Remembered my slip this time,” she says triumphantly, plonking it down on the counter. It was already in her hand, she hadn’t even needed to dig through her bags. 

“Lovely,” Marge says with a smile just as easy. Phil’s starting to wonder if he’s the only one who can’t pull it off. Marge stands and takes the slip and heads to the back to grab Karen’s shirt. 

“How’d your son do in the marathon?” Phil asks, trying one of those easy smiles. It feels mechanical. He hopes no one else thinks it is. 

“Would you believe,” Karen says, rolling her eyes and leaning close, “he didn’t even run it. Decided the night before that he wasn’t going to!” She laughs. 

Phil matches her laughter. Polite. Almost authentic. Would be authentic if he’d woken up feeling like himself today. “But you made a shirt and everything,” he says. 

“That alone should’ve gotten him in the top hundred,” she says as she throws her hands up. 

Marge steps forward with the new shirt wrapped up. “You’ve paid already,” she says, “You’re good to go.” 

“What’s this one for?” Phil asks. “He gonna drop out of the 2020 Olympics?” 

Karen laughs again, a little less polite this time. A little more earnestly. She shakes her head. “No, no,” she says. “He, er, he came out to me actually. About a week after the marathon that wasn’t.” 

“Oh,” Phil says, and he’s surprised he hadn’t thought of that. The rainbow lettering and the _Proud Mum_ is a bit on the nose after all. 

“Oh,” Marge says as well. She glances at Phil, because in her mind Phil is the one to handle any and all gay things. 

“Yeah,” Karen nods. “And he was scared as hell to tell me, so like… I just want him to know I love him.” She shrugs and runs her hand along the package. “It’s silly. But I think he’ll like it.” 

“If not, third time’s the charm,” Marge says. “You know where to find us.” 

Karen stuffs the shirt in her tote bag and makes her way to the door. “I do indeed. Thank you again!” She steps out, she melts into the sea of city-goers. 

*

Phil doesn’t feel awake again until lunchtime. He feels like the morning is a weird blur because he’s buzzing with an unacknowledged anxiety. He won’t acknowledge it. He refuses to. 

When he does feel awake again it’s because the anxiety shifts to anger. An unpointed anger that finds outlet because his phone buzzes and he sees Martyn’s name on the screen. “Hey,” he says flatly, picking up the call. 

“Hey to you,” Martyn says. “Bad day?” 

Phil hums out a, “Mm-hmm,” and that’s the most he’s willing to give. 

“I can call back later,” his brother offers, “I just wanted to pester you about Florida again.” 

“Please don’t,” Phil says, “And please don’t call back later if that’s all you’re going to do. I’m not going to Florida. I’m not sweating in America while Mum and Dad look at me pityingly and then the second I turn around there’s glee in their eyes.” 

“What—”

“I’m not dealing with it, Martyn!” Phil hangs up and tosses his phone onto one of the nearby chairs. He feels awake and alive and angry, and he fucking hates it. Pervasive numbness is a relief to this, he finds. Boredom may chafe— but it doesn’t cut. 

*

“I’m leaving early,” Phil says with his bag already over his shoulder. “Not feeling well,” he lies. Not a full lie. But enough of a lie. And Hannah doesn’t argue; she’s already switched places with Marge and looking bored out of her mind even if she’s only been on the clock for five minutes, but she’s closed the shop alone before. 

He doesn’t look at his phone on the tube ride home because he doesn’t want to see anything from Martyn or Hannah on there. Or Bryony, if Martyn texted her. So he sits and watches people, averting his gaze as soon as they turn towards him and hoping they didn’t see. 

It takes ages for him to get to his flat. It takes ages to climb the stairs. It takes ages to plop down onto his bed. 

Everything has felt off today. Everything has felt off for ages, but today in particular he wasn’t able to just swallow it down as he has been. And he knows why, at least part of it, but not all of it. 

He knows why he got angry at Martyn, at least. He doesn’t know why he woke up feeling anxious and unhappy, but he knows why by the time his brother tried to talk him into the prospect of spending time with his family— like he used to, like he always loved doing— he could think of nothing he wanted less. 

It’s stupid to be jealous of someone he doesn’t know. Someone whose mum he has met twice, and _met_ in the most generous of ways. He should just be happy that somewhere in London is a guy whose mother’s first concern when he came out to her was that he knew she loved him. But he’s feeling like he wants to crawl out of his skin through his spine, he’s feeling like he wants to bury himself not in his blankets but under the mattress and let the weight of it crush him until he can sleep as long as he wants. 

He wishes his own coming out had been half as good. 

And he knows that’s not fair for so many reasons. He doesn’t know anything about Karen Howell’s son other than he failed to run a marathon and he’s gay. Which means he knows nothing about why Karen Howell’s son was so afraid to come out other than, well, all the usual reasons. And his own coming out wasn’t tragic. It wasn’t the horrible experience some people have, filled with violence and disowning and disgust. 

His was filled with overwhelming indifference. 

With the hope that he might yet settle down with “a nice girl” despite the revelation. With the reminder that he’s young and could always change his mind. 

Even years later when he’d introduced Brandon to them, his parents treated him like a phase. They never said much, but Phil could feel it in the way they treated him. When the engagement fell apart it was like a cruel confirmation. 

He thinks he might cry. God, it’d be so stupid if he cried. 

He rolls onto his back. 

He takes a deep breath. 

The buzz of his long-ignored phone in his pocket interrupts him. He pulls it out and sees Martyn’s name, same as he did an hour ago. He picks up the call and grunts out something resembling a greeting. 

“I’m not asking you to Florida,” Martyn says. Phil can practically see him holding his hands out in front of him. “I’m just calling to see if you’re good.” 

“Yeah,” Phil tries to say. His voice cracks halfway through the single solitary syllable. 

Martyn hesitates. “Sure about that?”

“It’s just the same old shit, y’know?” 

“Yeah,” Martyn says, though he says it like he’s saying _no_. 

They’re quiet for a while. A long while. Just silence hanging heavy on the line. 

It wasn’t always like this. Phil always used to confide in his brother. He used to pester him, he used to look up to him. Phil doesn’t remember becoming a stranger to him in the way he doesn’t remember becoming bored. But whether he remembers how it happened or not doesn’t really matter. It’s his life now. The moving forward is all he can effect. 

Phil clears his throat. “What’re you doing tonight?” He has to go back to work tomorrow, but doesn’t know anything about Martyn’s schedule. 

“Corn’s having a studio day,” he says. Phil knows what that means. They like a quiet night in after a studio day. 

“This new stuff’s gonna be great,” Phil says, even though he hasn’t heard any of it. He just knows what Cornelia’s capable of. 

“Yeah,” Martyn says. “Yeah, what she has so far is.” 

They’re quiet again. Martyn doesn’t ask Phil what he’s doing tonight. Phil wouldn’t know what to tell him if he did. 

“Well, I think I’m gonna let you go,” Phil says. He can feel tears pooling in his eyes, falling down the sides and tickling near his ears. He’s relieved none of it is leaking into his voice, for now. 

“Alright. Sorry about earlier.” 

“It’s okay. I just… I’m not ready for something like Florida.” 

Martyn is quiet. Phil thinks he might be nodding. Or maybe he got distracted. Maybe he’s not paying any attention to this conversation at all. “Call you later?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Phil says, not caring that his voice cracks. He hangs up. 

*

There’s a knocking at his door. A pounding. It matches the pounding in his head. 

Phil opens his eyes. The room has gone dark around him. He didn’t mean to sleep— every time he does that it’s upsetting in a deeply visceral way. So he closes them tight again. 

There’s more knocking at the door. He hears a muffled, “Open up, Lester,” in a voice he knows all too well. 

“It’s open!” he shouts, because it should be. He doesn’t remember locking it on his beeline to the bed. 

He hears the door open and close, hears Bryony’s steps down the hall, hears her sit at the foot of his bed. “Hey,” she says, forced casualness dripping off the word. 

“Hey,” Phil says, opening his eyes and looking at the ceiling. He doesn’t wanna ask. He really, really doesn’t wanna ask. He has to anyways, he knows it. “What’re you doing here?” 

“Martyn called.” 

Phil rolls over onto his side, facing her. “Thought he would.”

“He’s worried about you,” she says. 

“You’re worried about me.” 

She nods. “I’m worried about you.” 

“But there’s not like…” he sits up and pulls his knees up close to his chest. “There’s not actually anything wrong. I’m not falling apart. This isn’t a breakdown. I get up, I go to work, I pay my bills. I mean, I feel like shit… but so does everyone.” 

“Not everyone. Not all the time, for this long.” 

They’re quiet. Phil wishes it would rain or something— not a wish he has to make often in London— so the clear May night that followed bright May sunshine could stop mocking him. 

“Maybe it’s a very, very slow breakdown,” Bryony says. 

“Couldn’t I just crash and burn and get it over with?” 

That makes her laugh. “I don’t recommend it,” she shrugs. Phil would feel worse if she hadn’t laughed. He had forgotten about her own breakdown the year before, which definitely hadn’t been as slow as his. The one that also came with the dissolving of a long term relationship and a sexuality crisis and a disillusionment with adulthood as a whole; the one that was basically Phil’s breakdown but condensed into two hellish weeks before she started to heal. Meanwhile, Phil is still unravelling. 

“Takeout, _Mario Kart_ , and a lot of wine?” he asks.

Bryony pulls out her phone. “You’re buying. I’ll tell Martyn you’re still alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/618114363828699136/live-incidentally) !


	5. Chapter 5

Marge babies Phil through most of the next morning. He had considered not coming in to work today, but his sulky self-indulgence only won out against his general guilt insofar as half of yesterday. So he’s in the print shop bright and early, there for Marge to tut over him. She greets him with a, “Heard you weren’t feeling well, love” and a frown. She fumbles her way around the Keurig machine and hands him a coffee that is almost too damn sweet even for his tastes. She places her hand on his shoulder and hands him the order forms and says, “Look, look,” at an ordered pun about bookstores and another about llamas. 

He’s grateful for this doting, but he won’t deny it reminds him of how his mother used to baby him when he lived at home… and being reminded of that isn’t exactly helping with his heavy heart. 

But somehow the morning passes. Time marches forward as he can always count on it to do. Soon enough he’s in the back room working on orders while Hannah sits at the counter watching livestreams of the tortoises at the London zoo. And it looks like the day itself with pass without any real excitement, until he hears the bell above the door chime and Hannah greet the customer. 

He can’t hear exactly what they’re saying. He can hardly pick up their tone, considering his phone is currently playing the _Interstellar_ soundtrack. But he hears enough to know that Hannah is frustrated. Despite working in customer service, she has some obvious tells. 

Which means Phil isn’t all surprised when after a few minutes she slips into the back room with him. “Can you come talk to this guy?” she asks. 

“What’s wrong?” Phil loathes, absolutely utterly _loathes_ confronting upset customers. But he’s the manager. This is why he makes the not-all-that-big-but-bigger-than-minimum-wage bucks. 

“He’s throwing a fit,” Hannah says, folding her arms and plopping herself onto one of the many stools they have around the room. “Wants a manager.” 

Phil sighs and stands and washes his hands. He steps into the front holding his too-sweet coffee if only because he feels he ought to be holding something. 

He’s surprised by the person he sees standing by the counter, for a few reasons. He’s younger than Phil had been bracing for— usually the customers that kick up a fuss are comfortably middle-aged, but this guy looks to be somewhere around Phil’s 32 years give or take a handful in either direction. Also, he’s tall. He’s hunching but Phil can see if he’d straighten his spine he’d stand just a bit taller than Phil, and that doesn’t happen too often. It makes Phil reconsider his own posture, rolling his shoulders quickly. 

Next, he’s surprised because the guy doesn’t seem as angry as Hannah had implied. He’s just got a slight frown, but he’s not shaking or muttering or greeting Phil with a, “Hey fuckface, you the manager?” Phil wonders if Hannah’s fuse has been short as his own lately. 

He buttons on what he’s sure is a tired smile. It’s what he’s got to offer today. “Afternoon,” he says, placing his coffee on the counter. 

The customer nods. “She said she couldn’t help me,” he says, nodding towards the door to the back room where Hannah is out of sight. 

“Well, I’m sure she tried to,” Phil says. “But maybe I can.” 

The customer runs a hand through his mop of curly hair. “I need you to put someone on a blacklist. Like, don’t take any more orders from her. I reminded your employee that you guys have the right to refuse service to anyone or whatever, but she wouldn’t do it.”

Phil frowns. “I mean, we _do_ have the right to refuse service to anyone… but we also kinda have the right to accept orders from whoever we want too. You’re asking us to take a financial loss. We’re a small business.” 

“I know,” the man shrugs, “I know. It’s stupid. But if my mum buys one more shirt from you guys I’m gonna lose my mind.” 

Phil frowns deeper, looking at the face in front of him. At the brow bone, at the tilt of his head when he speaks, at the freckles lightly dotting his skin. He doesn’t know why these features would be familiar to him, if he hadn’t spent a lot of last night thinking about someone else who has them. “Karen Howell’s son?” he asks. 

The customer looks puzzled, taken aback. He nods, lets out a confused huff of a laugh. “That’s me,” he says, “Dan.” 

*

“How’d you get rid of him?” Hannah asks about seven minutes later when Phil makes his way into the back room. She’s snacking on a bag of popcorn that Phil had smelled popping while he talked with Dan, and he holds out his hand because he really needs his favourite snack right about now. 

He just wasn’t expecting to actually meet Karen Howell’s son. And he wasn’t expecting Karen Howell’s son to look… like _that_. Like every bias Phil ever had in his uni years, but grown-up and broad shouldered and curly-haired. He wasn’t expecting to feel an inexplicable urge to get Karen Howell’s son laughing, just to see if they had the same dimpled smile. And he wasn’t expecting to feel a twist in his gut he didn’t think he could feel anymore when it worked. 

Phil shrugs. “Just told him we’d think about it. If Karen Howell submits an order again we’ll give him a heads up, and he can decide to cover the costs of not taking the order or just let it be.” 

“We’ll give him a heads up?” Hannah folds her arms. 

“Yeah,” Phil shrugs again. “Yeah, he left his number.” 

Maybe Phil trying to play it nonchalant is too damn obvious. Maybe Hannah wouldn’t have picked up on anything if he didn’t lay it on so thick. But as is, the corner of her mouth quirks up. “He did, did he?” she says with too much of a glint in her eye. 

Hannah hasn’t had that same glint since the time she introduced Phil to Brandon and he asked her the next day at work if he happened to be seeing anyone. He thinks she was a yenta in a past life. The matchmaker kind, not the busybody kind. It’s a thin line. She would’ve been very good at it.

A few months in with Bradnon, when things started to feel rather serious, Phil had asked Hanah why she set them up. Like, what made her think they would work. He can still clearly remember that clever little smile on her face when she told him, “He’s ready to be adored. And you were lookin’ to adore.” 

Which, with hindsight… yeah. 

He suddenly wonders if Dan had asked to speak to a manager at all. Or if Hannah herself had suggested it. 

He nods, “Just in case his mum makes another order.” 

She takes the popcorn bag back. “He said you shouldn’t text him otherwise?” 

“Don’t see why I would, Han,” he says, aggressively fighting a blush. “You should get back to the counter though.” 

She does, and she leaves the popcorn behind, and he buries himself in orders for the rest of the day. 

*

A few hours later, as they’re locking up the shop, Hannah asks, “Did you give that guy your number too? Or did he just leave his?” 

“Why exactly would he need my number?” Phil asks, switching off the lights. 

“Might be good to have,” she shrugs, “Maybe you should text it to him.” Phil mimics choking her, and she laughs as she pushes him away. “Just a thought!” 

“You dragging me out tonight?” he asks, hoping the idea of him bringing it up will distract her enough. They step outside into the night air. 

And it does distract her, well into the night as they grab dinner and drinks and meet up with some of her friends who want second dinner and more drinks. 

It distracts Phil too. Distracts him so much he doesn’t realize how tired he is until he falls into his bed, grateful that the next morning is his day off. He has a glass of water on his bedside table, and an aspirin. He’ll have those when he’s ready to fall asleep, but he’s still kinda buzzing. And for once it isn’t pure anxiety, it’s also due to the generously proportioned whiskey gingers that he’d had. 

His usually motion-sensitive stomach is enjoying the gentle rocking of the world as he has a light case of the spins. 

He doesn’t know how well looking at his phone screen is going to do, adding it to the mix, but he tries it anyway. He tries his colour-by-number app, tries a Buzzfeed quiz about what 90s heartthrob he is based on the pizza topping he chooses, tries to send an _I’m sorry_ text to Martyn that won’t reveal how drunk he is but decides he can’t pull it off and will do it in the morning. 

He drops his phone by his side and just enjoys the motion of the world for a few quiet moments. He pushes his shirt up his chest a bit and lightly runs his hands over his bare stomach. If he’s gentle enough about it, despite drunk clumsy hands, he can close his eyes and imagine someone else giving him these soft touches. 

Some faceless someone, some unthreatening someone. 

He moves a little higher under his shirt and starts circling his nipple. It’s more difficult to give light touches there simply because it feels so good to tug a little. He lets out a breath that becomes a sigh. He does it again and it becomes a whimper. 

Phil is impatient, by nature but certainly helped along by the whisky running through his veins, so he moves his hands to unbutton his jeans and fight with their tight fit to get a hand around himself. It feels good: physical and simple in a way too much of his life hasn’t felt lately. 

After a few hurried minutes of wanking, the safe and faceless someone who he’d assigned the pleasure to starts to reveal a face. An all too familiar face, Brandon looking pleased with himself for giving Phil just what he needs. 

Phil’s hand stills. His breathing is so loud in the quiet room. The spinning world around him seems to pause. 

He can choose not to focus on that face, he decides. It showed up, but he can banish it. 

There’s a worry somewhere in his foggy brain that if he goes back to a nebulous no one that Brandon will reappear. So he brings the only face he can think of for whatever reason, a curly-haired and dimpled face he’d seen for the first time a few hours before. 

It’s a face he doesn’t know all the moods of, doesn’t know for sure how it would look wanking Phil. But a welcome change, an exciting change. One which has him coming so hard he feels it in the arches of his feet. 

Phil wipes his hands on his jeans. He wishes he’d taken them off before, but can’t be too bothered about it just now. Not when he’s feeling so good. 

He rolls over onto his side once the high wears a little, then groans and sits up to take the aspirin and down the water before he forgets about it. 

While he’s leaning against his headboard, looking around his dark room and wishing he had fairy lights or a lamp or just something in between the ceiling light or nothing to fit during these moments of late night and wide awake, he hits the home button on his phone and sees it is still open to messages. And he hears Hannah egging him on even though she isn’t actually here with him. He types with clumsy fingers, something he knows he’s gonna be embarrassed about in the morning. But his drunk brain justifies it as he’s entered the self-destructive period of his breakdown. 

“ _Hey_ ” he types, “ _I donut know if you want mt # too, but here it is_ ” 

Despite reading it over carefully, it’s only after hitting send that Phil notices the typos. It’s too late to do anything now. He rips off his sweaty shirt and slides down under his duvet before he realises he’s still in his messy jeans, so he shuffles out of those as well. 

Then he hears a buzzing from his phone. “ _not a new phone but who dis?_ ” the message reads. Phil laughs as he sees he’d entered the contact as Karen Howell’s Son and wonders if he should change it. 

Instead, he types, “ _Sorry :3 Phil, from Printzoid._ ” 

He’s grateful that autocorrect got the name of his shop right. He’s mortified his early aughts chat emoticons decided to make an appearance. He decides he’s gonna read every message over twice now before sending. He doesn’t know if it’d be worse that this guy thinks he’s drunk or an idiot but he wants to avoid both. 

Dan doesn’t take long to respond, but he’s disappointingly flat. “ _okay. thanks_ ”

Phil stares at that for what feels like ages. Stares at it while the world spins around him. Stares at it while the glass of water he’d chugged sits heavily in his gut. 

Then Dan sends another message. “ _you’re up late_ ”

“ _You are too_ ,” Phil texts back. 

“ _yeah. sorry if i was a dick earlier._ ” 

“ _You weren’t_ ,” Phil sends. “ _Customer is always right and all that shit._ ”

“ _lol_ ”

Phil falls asleep waiting for some kind of follow-up to that _lol_. But Dan doesn’t send one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/618473462251569152/live-incidentally) !


	6. Chapter 6

Dan doesn’t sleep as his bedroom goes from pitch black to grey. It’s a slow change, but his burning eyes note each hue. He’d gotten a little sleep, not much, the hours between nine and midnight. More than he sometimes gets. 

It’s lonely. It’s viscerally lonely, to feel the great silence of the night crowding his walls. 

There was a brief moment where it wasn’t quite so lonely, when he’d gotten a text message from an unknown number and found out who it was and considered seeking any sort of human connection before giving up after a few exchanged texts. That small respite from loneliness kept the hours, before the sun rises and Dan can justify getting up for the day, from becoming a spiral. It was plain old insomnia. He’ll take it over a spiral any fucking night. 

He stretches until his spine pops. He rolls over onto his back, tries to remember what he has to get done today but it’s nothing more than some scripting. Not enough to urge him out of bed… he could script in his notes app if he really felt like it. But then his rumbling stomach reminds him that he’s hungry even if he doesn’t realise it. 

There’s a quick search among his sheets for his phone. He sees the time and opens UberEats and orders a chai latte and a pistachio muffin, then challenges himself to put on some decent pyjamas before the delivery arrives. 

He mostly succeeds. He’s wearing a pair of black pants and his old red uni hoodie, so all his important bits are covered even if just barely. 

*

There’s a bit of a breeze as Dan sits on his balcony. It’s nice, even if it leaves goosebumps all up and down his legs. He runs warm, likes when there’s a breeze. He holds his hot drink in his hands and feels more alive with every sip.

Maybe today won’t be a bad day despite his shit sleep. 

His phone buzzes on the table beside him. It’s an ugly, metallic sound that makes him jump. 

When he looks at the alert he sees it’s a text from a number still unknown, because he never bothered to make a new contact last night. It reads “ _Hey, it was probs pretty weird of me to text you. I’m sorry._ ” 

Dan thinks about those great big eyes he saw yesterday downturned apologetically like they had been when he complained about his mum. He imagines the same apologetic look in them now. 

“ _no worries not weird_ ” he sends. He takes a big swig of his drink as though a chai latte can give him the same confidence as rum. “ _i gave it to you for a reason after all_ ” 

He wonders if that was a little too flirtatious. He’s normally much better over text or online, but for some reason he’s overthinking everything this guy said and did back in the print shop. He’s wondering if he misinterpreted all of it, because that’d be just his luck after all. And it’s been a while since he dared be flirtatious anyway, but this guy’s quiff drooped so teasingly into his glasses. And he humoured Dan’s ridiculous request, at least insofar as it made him feel a little less ridiculous. 

So what was he supposed to do? Not give the guy his number, not feel warm relief when he actually texted him? 

But then there aren’t any more texts. 

Dan tries to tell himself that the guy probably started work or something. He tries not to think he’s fucked up already. And yet his brain is happy to whisper that he has. He picks at his muffin and tries to ignore those whispers. Plenty of people work normal jobs with normal hours, they aren’t always glued to his phone the way Dan is. 

He heads back inside his flat. He reads over the quick conversations he’s had with Phil. He scolds himself for being so fixated already on so little. 

Maybe it’s time he actually stuck to a hobby. Maybe it’s time he spoke to more people than the grocer and his boss and his mum. 

*

Dan is curled up on the couch with his tired body begging for a nap. The room is bright with springtime noon sun pouring in his open windows. He feels his phone buzz in his hoodie’s pocket and ignores it, too close to blessed sleep even if he is actually too grey on his insides to manage it. 

But then it buzzes again.

And again. 

It’s a call, and that’s harder to ignore. He pulls out his phone and sees his boss’s name. The closest he has to a boss. His contact with the podcast network he’s under, Timothy, the one who double-checks on his deadlines because Dan is a famously a perfectionist who is a little too hard on himself. He’s been podcasting long enough that he could have a dud week for the sake of posting on time, but he won’t allow it. He won’t even allow anyone else to edit his episodes. He’s a control freak, deeply do-it-yourself despite a lack of any formal training. 

He doesn’t pick up the call. He doesn’t have the patience today. He knows that makes him a shit employee, but he’s still four days off deadline. Timothy can wait a few hours. Or a day or two. 

But while he’s holding his phone in his hand, a different alert pops up. A text from print shop guy. “ _Can I ask you a question?_ ” he sends. “ _I’m hungover so you have to be nice to me._ ” 

Reading that makes Dan’s face crack into a smile. He wonders if the poor guy was still drunk when he’d texted this morning. He rolls onto his back and types out, “ _shoot_ ” 

The response comes in quickly. “ _Why’d you drop out of the London Marathon?_ ” 

The smile is replaced with a blush. Did his mum treat this print shop like a bar or a hair salon? Gabbing with this stupidly cute employee every time she went in to pick up another empty gesture gift? 

He wonders how much he wants to tell this guy. His sleepless night is leaving him unusually open to a little vulnerability. “ _just realized i couldn’t do it. i shouldn’t have signed up in the first place, and i definitely shouldn’t have told anyone_ ” 

“ _I think it’s brave. I’ve never done anything like that._ ” 

“ _brave when i chickened out lol what do you think about actual war heroes, mate?_ ” 

“ _Got me there, you’re not braver than Mulan I guess_ ” 

Dan’s grinning again. It hasn’t felt this easy to talk to someone in ages. Maybe because this guy knows so little about him, but enough thanks to his gabbing mum to feel like they skipped being strangers. If anything they’re like, friend of a friend. And the friend is his mum… shouldn’t work, but it does. 

“ _can i ask you something?_ ” he sends. “ _i’m not hungover but you should be nice to me anyways_ ” 

Phil sends back the thumbs-up emoji. Dan realises he doesn’t actually have a question, jut wanted to know what Phil would say. He wracks his brain. “ _would you have texted me last night if you weren’t drunk?_ ” 

The three dots make a maddening start and stop appearance. Then Phil texts, “ _I might’ve picked a better hour lol but also don’t know if I would’ve had the nerve. Didn’t wanna seem creepy or anything…_ ” 

Before Dan has a chance to answer, Phil sends another message. “ _Was it creepy?_ ” 

“ _i don’t give my number to people i don’t wanna hear from_.” Dan texts. 

There’s another long pause. Then Phil says, “ _Oh good. I overthink a lot. Wanted to be sure it wasn’t just in case your mum placed an order_ ” 

“ _oh definitely still let me know if she does_ ” 

“ _Promise_ ,” Phil sends. 

*

Dan finally gets his much-needed nap around four in the afternoon. He wakes up to a text sent only a few minutes after he must’ve dozed off. “ _Adding to the list of very creepy things that I hope you won’t take as creepy, I might’ve googled you_.” 

A part of him thinks it should be creepy, and a larger part of him thinks that’s just what a millennial does when they think someone’s cute. And he really likes the idea of this guy thinking he’s cute, bolstered by his carefully cultivated Instagram and whatever else he found. He hopes the guy stuck to his socials, didn’t dip into his work. Dan is rarely so lucky, but he hopes anyways. And tries to play this off as cheeky. “ _no fair_ ” he texts, “ _i don’t know your last name. cant return the favour_.” 

“ _Lester. Phil Lester, nice to meet you._ ” 

“ _thanks, will do a thorough fbi investigation later_ ” 

“ _You’ll find me right boring. No podcast skeletons in my closet_ ” 

There it is. He isn’t lucky in the least. Dan texts, “ _please tell me you only listened to new stuff? the old ones are shit._ ” 

“ _I’m a beginning-middle-end guy. And 100+ episodes will keep me busy_.” 

Dan’s groaning thinking about how much lol random XD crap his early episodes are littered with. Maybe this guy isn’t creepy, maybe he just has bad taste wanting to sit through that. It took a long time to stop wanting to punch that past-Dan. 

Phil texts him again, interrupting a proper cringe attack. “ _You’ve got a voice for radio._ ” 

“ _and the face_ ” Dan sends. 

“ _No way_ ,” Phil says. “ _It’s a good face_ ” 

“ _your mum has a great face_ ” Dan types before he can stop himself. 

“ _Darn right she does! lol and so does yours if we’re tallying creepy things I’ve done and said_.” 

“ _you just texting me to get to my mum? because you should know this wouldn’t be the first time_.” 

Dan waits for a response text, but suddenly there’s a call coming through. Same unassigned number. He answers.

“Sorry,” he hears Phil’s voice come through. “Still hungover, can’t keep looking at a screen.” 

“No problem,” Dan says, even if he hates talking on the phone more than most forms of torture. 

“I’m not just trying to get to your mum,” Phil says with a laugh. Dan wants to drink that laughter up. It surprises him, he hasn’t even wanted to drink water most of the day.

“Glad to hear it.” 

“But I also don’t know what I’m doing,” Phil clears his throat. “It’s uh, it’s been a long time since I wanted to get to know someone.” 

“And you want to get to know me?” 

“Add another tally mark.” 

Dan laughs. “Flattering me isn’t creepy.” 

“No… maybe not…” 

Dan hears a yawn in the distance, like Phil had held the phone far away. “So you’re a sleepy hangover?” 

“Sleepy, hungry, grouchy. You name it.” 

“If this is you grouchy, I think a good day would give me a cavity,” Dan laughs. 

Phil pauses. “Well, it’s been a while since a good day. Maybe instead of creepy I’m just being too honest. I’m a little too much all the time.” 

“Who isn’t?” Dan says. “Oh that’s right, me. I’m a little not enough all the time.” 

Phil laughs, but it’s not a mean laugh. It’s a laugh of camaraderie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/618744208358080512/live-incidentally) !


	7. Chapter 7

The later the night gets, the more tired he and Phil get, the more Dan decides he really likes Phil’s laugh. He likes when it gets low and gravely and quicker to sit under Phil’s words. They mean to hang up a few times, starting casual enough goodbyes before going off on some other tangent. They’re both fully to blame. But eventually they do hang up, with a promising, “Talk to you tomorrow,” from Phil and a smile on Dan’s face he doesn’t even notice until he realizes his cheeks are starting to ache. Is he that unused to smiling? He guesses he’d better get used to it. 

That’s an oddly optimistic thought for Dan to have, he realises as soon as he has it. 

But he doesn’t want to argue against it. He wants to hold the thought tight and precious and safe behind his ribcage. 

Dan sleeps better than he thought he would. He sleeps so well he doesn’t actually want to get out of bed. He lies there warm in his sheets with sleep still heavy in his eyes and echoes of Phil’s laugher bouncing round Dan’s skull. 

There’s a warmth all around him— the warmth his body puts out but also warmth from the sun streaming through his window and the warmth of that echoing laughter. Dan pulls out his phone and types in _Phil Lester_ to the Facebook app he almost never fucking opens because he wants to see if that face is as good as he remembers. He scrolls until he sees those eyes, clicks on the profile and photos. 

Dan rolls over onto his stomach. His body is interested in a specific morning activity but his brain isn’t interested in the usual fodder. It’s dumb, he’d be a little embarrassed to admit it, but he wants to see Phil. 

There are good photos, with big smiles and friends and a lot of seaside landscapes, but Dan stops scrolling when he gets to one of Phil in what looks like an elevator. He’s got a grey athletic hoodie and his quiff is long and Dan zeros in on that cupid’s bow and full bottom lip and suddenly his mind races with a great many things. 

The idea that the same man that can smile so sweetly, laugh so loudly, can also stare with piercing eyes like that? Maybe Dan never stood a chance against falling for him.

Because he’s feeling so unusually well-rested, for him, and because sure it’s been a week or so since he bothered to muster up the interest in a wank, because he’s on his stomach and his flannel sheets feel nice against his face and he’s hard in his pants and the friction is so good, that picture is enough for Dan to let his mind wander and get the job done. He imagines running his fingers through that long dark quiff. He imagines getting that full bottom lip between his teeth. He ruts his hips a little when he thinks about Phil’s voice gravelly with sleep. 

It’s good. It’s been a while since his brain wasn’t so focused on dread to allow something so simple to feel so good. 

He’s lazy and slow about it. Not like he has somewhere to be. 

Phil is mostly static in the wandering of his mind. Dan’s the one being active, touching that freckled skin, learning the dips and curves and flat planes. As he imagines his explorations of a body doesn’t yet know, his hips roll rhythmically, giving him teasing flashes of friction. Eventually, even his own pace is too teasing. He rolls onto his side and slips a hand into his pants. 

Now that he’s not being slow about it, everything culminates quickly enough. 

It’s good. He feels even warmer. Messier, sure, and ready for a shower, but so fucking good. 

*

Dan does two things before hopping in the shower. He texts Phil, since it seems only fair as Phil has texted first yesterday and he doesn’t want this to feel like some kind of chess game where they’re trying to plan eight moves ahead, he just wants to text him and so he’s gonna. He sends, “ _what you up to today?_ ” and clicks out of messages before he can decide if it was a stupid text or not. 

Then he rolls over onto his back, ignores the squelch in his pants, and scrolls further through Phil’s social media. He’s not gonna do a deep dive yet, he can’t ignore the call of cleanliness for that long, but the curiosity is demanding some satisfaction. 

Phil seems to make more or less generic posts. Not generic exactly, because they’re funny and interesting and weird, but more… surface level. Easily consumed. Not rocking any boats. Posts from around election times have urges to register and vote, but they’re a far cry from the stuff Dan posted around the same time which caused a mild row between him and his older relatives. 

It’s not that Phil doesn’t seem to have opinions, it seems like he just doesn’t show them. 

Or maybe Dan’s reading a lot into a guy he doesn’t know and his public posts. 

There are lots of photos with people Dan assumes are family, some people gathered round a table with board games, some photos with the woman he’d been helped by at the print shop before Phil. The further back he goes there’s another person who isn’t in any recent photos. A guy. A handsome guy, often with his hand round Phil’s waist or kissing Phil’s cheek. 

Dan sees the guy in those photos is tagged. He’s tempted as hell to click the tag and go snooping, but the need to shower finally wins out. Besides, he thinks he should have breakfast before he goes on such an obviously self-destructive quest. 

He turns the water so hot the room fills with steam and he steps out with red skin. He feels fresh, almost reborn. 

Slipping into a striped jumper and black jeans, he hears his phone buzz. Phil has responded with, “ _Day off, at tesco picking up necessities: haribo, pasta, hair dye, more pasta_ ”

“ _the bear necessities of life_ ” Dan sends.

“ _Exactly 😁_ ”

“ _hair dye electric blue? platinum blonde?_ ” 

“ _lol black, same as always. gotta keep up my emo cred even if I’ve abandoned the fringe for my quiff_ ” 

Dan is excited at the prospect of scrolling so far through Phil’s pictures that he gets to those emo days. They’ll remind him of his own, and he suspects they’ll be unfairly hot. 

His stomach growls. He looks at the clock and sees the time for eating something called breakfast has come and gone, but lunch food has more condiments anyway. 

“ _want a hand?_ ” he texts Phil. 

*

They meet up about an hour later at a café where Dan shows up before Phil and spends the intervening eight minutes with sweaty palms. He doesn’t know why he’s so fucking nervous. 

Of course he does. He just doesn’t want to admit it.

This is his first date since coming out. To his family, to the podcast. It’s also his first date in a while. Like… a long while. 

So the pressure is on, and he’s trying not to think about how into this guy he already is and how weird their meeting at all is so it sounds a little like that fate shit he’s always denouncing and even the randomness of the universe has their meeting at all seem a little intentional. 

He’s trying not to think about the possibility that Phil isn’t half as into this as he is, considering they’ve seen each other once and texted for a few days and fuck he’s really making something out of nothing isn’t he— pinning all his hopes on a handsome imagined man. Words he’d read years and years ago float to the forefront of his mind: “ _then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault… The same thing happened over and over: I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all._ ” 

Worse even than that happening, Dan knows all too well, is the possibility of it happening in reverse. In Phil thinking for a short while that maybe Dan will do, and then the more he learns about him and the more flaws are revealed, the more apparent every way Dan could never be enough would become. 

He takes a sip of water. 

He needs to get a grip.

It’s been _three fucking days_! 

There’s a chime as the door opens. Dan looks up and sees the glasses and quiff and very blue eyes scanning the room. When they land on him, Phil breaks into a smile and Dan tries to wipe his sweaty palms unnoticeably under the table. 

*

Lunch goes well. They laugh a lot, eat a lot, indulge in some light day drinking. They split the check and neither of them comments on it. 

While they’re finishing up, Dan points towards Phil’s hair. “So you need that even darker? Dark as a patch of midnight that had never been cleared away?” 

Phil laughs, sips, seems to think for a second. Then he claps. “ _The Hobbit_? Old animated Rankin&Bass version?” 

The fact that Phil has yet to fail to get a reference Dan drops innately makes him feel something close to giddy. Dan Howell hasn’t felt giddy in years, but he remembers the sensation. He nods. 

“Ten points,” Phil says, imitating marking a tally. “And yeah,” he leans closer, “gotta cover these roots, see? Can’t let anyone know I’m secretly a ginger.” 

Dan is not complaining about getting close enough to Phil to see his roots. He can see more freckles here. He can see more colours hiding in his very blue eyes. He nods again. “Understandable, and time is of the essence.” 

“Come to mine then,” Phil says, standing. “Got everything we need including a plastic bowl I’ve designated as the ruined bowl for years now and three ruined towels.” 

“Three?” Dan laughs. He stands as well. “You’d think if you’d been doing this so long you wouldn’t be so messy.” 

“You should learn right away that I’m horrendously messy.” They step outside. It’s a nice day with a spring breeze. Phil doesn’t walk in the direction of the tube station, so Dan has to assume he lives nearby. 

“Got it,” Dan says, “filed away in my Phil Facts.” 

Phil laughs. “What else you got in there?”

“Hmm, let’s see,” he mimes flipping through a notebook and adjusting a pair of glasses. “Phil Lester. Manager at Printzoid, secret ginger, delightful hungover unlike 99% of the world population, thinks my mum is fit, has surprisingly good media hot takes, a good height, a good… lots of things,” he clears his throat, “and messy.” 

“Not bad,” Phil smiles. “I’ll point out I only think your mum is fit in the I’m-gay-but-still-have-eyes kind of way.” 

“That’s somehow more flattering.” Dan bumps into his shoulder. 

“Wanna hear my Dan Facts?” 

It’s tempting. And dreadful. Dan doesn’t think he could handle it just now. “How far are you in the podcast?” 

“Episode 11.” 

That too is tempting and dreadful, the want to read into the fact that Phil has already consumed eleven hours of his content. Because he wanted to. Because he wanted to hear Dan’s voice for eleven fucking hours and still have lunch with him today. 

“Yeah, no,” Dan says, “you can share your Dan Facts if you ever get out of the cringe era.” 

“Deal!” Phil stops in front of an apartment building. “This is me,” he points to the stairs. 

*

“Have you ever done this before?” 

“Never,” Dan says, his brow creased in concentration. 

“So why am I letting you help me again?” Phil laughs.

“Because you’re horrendously messy, which means combined with my beginners’ luck I’m liable to do a damn good job.” 

They’ve already mixed the box dye and dumped the chemicals into the promised ruined bowl, which Phil says makes him feel like he’s actually doing it properly even though using the provided squirt bottle would have the same effect as the bowl and brush he’d ordered online a decade ago. Phil has put on an old shirt and draped a ruined towel around his shoulders and sat on a chair they’d dragged into the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t we be in the bathroom,” Dan asks. 

“If you want to pass out from the concentrated fumes, be my guest,” Phil says, “but I’m not lugging your body somewhere comfortable. You’ll be on the tile until you come to.” 

“Okay, okay,” Dan moves behind Phil. “Ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be. Just watch my skin.”

Dan hums out agreement, and concentrates on the head of hair in front of him. Lovely hair. Very, very good hair that he’s about to become well acquainted with.

He runs gloved fingers through the strands and wishes he were feeling it with his bare skin. 

Later, he thinks, later and soon. 

There’s plenty of black from former dyes, but he sees the ruddy brown roots and even an occasional strand of grey. The back and sides are short enough, and he splits the bit making up Phil’s quiff into sections with the pointed end of the brush. Then he dips into the dye and paints his first section above Phil’s right ear. And he manages not to get any dye on his skin so he considered it a success. Only countless identical motions to go. 

Dan sees that Phil has closed his eyes. He isn’t talking because he wants to focus. He wishes the room didn’t smell so much of hair dye so he could get some idea of what it usually is like in Phil’s place. The flat itself is cosy, but like Phil’s Facebook posts it feels weirdly arm's-length in terms of decor that looks like it was furnished before Phil showed up. 

Like he lives around the space, not in it. 

Dan clears his throat. “All done,” he says. Phil hums and opens his eyes. 

“How’s it look?” 

“Wet and goopy.” 

“Finally, the look I deserve,” he says. He steps into the bathroom and inspects. Dan goes to rinse the empty plastic bowl in the sink when he hears Phil calling. “Daaaaaan!” 

Dan heads toward the bathroom trying desperately not to think about Phil saying his name like that in other situations, and calls back, “Wot?”

“You’ve ruined me!” Phil pouts, “Look.” 

There’s a splattering of black dye on the pale expanse of Phil’s neck, behind his ear which somehow neither of them had noticed when it dropped. It looks half dry at this point. 

Dan takes the corner of the ruined towel and soaks it in hot water from the tap. He apologizes and laughs, and Phil laughs as well so he doesn’t feel bad. The wet towel does a little good but not much. There’s still a very visible splotch.

“Do you have any coconut oil? I think I saw a life hack vid once about this.” 

“Do I look like a man who has his life together enough to own coconut oil?”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Dan laughs, still wiping at Phil’s neck. 

“It’ll be fine. It’ll go away eventually, and you did do much better than me the first time so thanks for that.” 

“Am I gonna get a nice tip?” Dan says before he can stop himself. 

“Let’s wait for the final result, bub.” Phil pokes at Dan’s shoulder.

There’s a twenty-minute wait while they snack on prawn Pringles and Phil makes them afternoon coffees. Phil makes Dan’s a little too sweet, but the gesture itself was sweet so Dan drinks it happily. 

Then Phil lays a towel by the edge of his sink and lays on his back on the kitchen counter and Dan uses the sprayer to rinse all the dye out of his hair. If there are a few soft sighs that slip out of Phil while he does so, well then, they just encourage him that maybe he’s doing something right. 

For once in his fucking life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/619106787107487744/live-incidentally) !


	8. Chapter 8

Phil doesn’t do anything to style his hair once the dye is all washed out. Just rubs a towel over his head furiously and pushes the damp strands off his forehead. Dan finds it somehow even better than the careful, styled quiff he’s seen Phil sporting before this. He can’t pinpoint how or why, but figures it’s something along the lines of _sweatpants, hair tied, chilling with no makeup on—_ like there’s just something utterly comfortable about being in Phil’s flat, seeing him like this, despite it being their first date. 

The comfort should frighten him. Does frighten him, in some low-level buzz that he intentionally pushes aside before he can spiral and ruin this lovely afternoon. 

“So?” Phil says, folding his arms and tilting his chin, “how’s it look?” 

Dan has a few answers ready to go, some genuine and some sarcastic. Instead of saying any of them, however, he tosses aside the towel with which he’d been drying his hands and steps nearer to Phil. He places a hand on Phil’s face to pull him in, the skin of his wrist resting against the splotch of dried ink on Phi’s neck, and kisses him. 

He kisses Phil like he’s wanted to do all fucking day. He kisses Phil like he thinks he’s wanted to do since he first walked out of the backroom in his print shop. 

Dan is an overthinker. Often it means he stands in his own way, spiralling over outcomes and possibilities more so than actually reaching out for what he wants. He’s gotten better lately. He’s making an effort not to let the things he wants pass him by. It means that right now, when faced with Phil in front of him, his hair freshly dyed and his smile wide and the afternoon sun hitting his face in a way that makes him glow, Dan can’t help but kiss him. 

One of Phil’s hands is at Dan’s waist, fiddling with a belt loop. Soon Dan feels Phil’s teeth on his bottom lip and it makes a sound similar to a groan slip out of him. Phil tastes like their afternoon coffees and smells like hair dye and when Dan’s hand slips to grip on Phil’s shoulder he finds Phil feels sturdy as all hell despite some clumsiness Dan had noticed over the day.

Phil pulls away before Dan is really ready for him too, but then a voice in the back of his mind tells him he should just be grateful Phil hadn’t pulled away the second he’d kissed him. 

He takes two steps back since Phil can’t with the kitchen counter behind him, even though he very much does not want to. 

Phil looks to Dan’s feet; he brings his fingertips to his lips. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m… out of practise.” 

“Me too, mate,” Dan says, shrugging and attempting to make his face smile. He’s trying not to panic, can feel the current of anxiety running in his veins and tries to ignore it with all his might. But he’s losing. He’s about to break, and let the anxiety wash over him, and let himself say whatever stupid thing gets him out of this situation even if he regrets it later. 

Then Phil laughs, and it’s that laugh Dan’s already bloody addicted to. Phil looks up to meet his eye and he’s blushing. “I’m guessing that means it looks pretty good then?” 

Dan laughs too. “Yeah,” he nods, “I did a damn good job.” 

*

Dan only lingers for another twenty minutes or so, the anxiety too heavy for him to think of anything other than getting back into his own flat and burrowing under his blankets before he can well and truly screw this up. Phil kisses his cheek before leaning against the doorjamb and waving as Dan waits for the lift. His phone buzzes in his pocket before he even gets to the ground floor: a text from Phil reading, “ _today was nice :)_ ” 

He texts back, “ _it was_ ”

They continue to text as Dan makes his way home. They continue to text as afternoon bleeds into evening. They continue to text until Phil says he’s got to sleep because he has to work in the morning. 

Then Dan is left alone. 

He tries to work on a script for the next podcast, but he can’t exactly focus. He preheats the oven for some frozen chips and sits sipping some wine while he waits, scrolling through Phil’s Instagram and trying very hard not to accidentally double-tap.

In the older photos he sees a face he’d noticed earlier— that handsome face in old photos on Phil’s Facebook. He’s tagged; Dan doesn’t hesitate to click even if some nagging in the back of his mind tells him he shouldn’t. Tells him he either shouldn’t at all, or should only once he’s had more wine. 

He’s rather all or nothing when it comes to self-destruction. 

His oven beeps before he gets past the bio: _brando_bravo, There’s a button called Follow, press it. Bios cannot tell my story. | 🌃🏌🏽♂️♓️_. 

Dan dumps the pile of chips onto a foiled cookie sheet and sets a timer. He refills his glass. He starts looking through the pictures on Mr. brando_bravo’s account. 

The guy is handsome, Dan had already noticed that. Big smile, sparkling green eyes, a jaw that could cut glass. He looks good next to Phil— they looked quite happy in all the posted photos. But Dan knows better than to trust that a social media profile can really be the whole story. He knows because of the many polished photos he’s posted on his own Instagram while covered in crumbs and sat on his sofa for the umpteenth hour. 

Still… he wants to know more than the emoji-cluttered and impersonal captions are telling him. He switches over to Facebook. 

The timer beeps. His chips are ready. Dan wonders if it’s a sign that he should stop digging now, while he’s ahead. While he’s not spiralling. While he hasn’t ruined everything like he constantly fears he inevitably will. 

Before he is able to make an actual decision, however, his phone starts buzzing. It’s Phil— Dan answers before he can freak out over whether it’s a good idea or not. 

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey, sorry. Couldn’t sleep. Hope this is alright.”  
Phil’s voice is gravely and Dan has to swallow the groan that almost slips out. 

“Yeah, no worries,” Dan says instead. “I can’t sleep either, but it’s probably as I haven’t tried. Oh, and also the wine. I’ve had some wine.” 

Phil laughs. “You getting sauced on a Monday night, Howell?” 

“Not yet, but we’ll see. Two glasses doesn’t count as sauced.” 

“Guess not.” They’re both quiet for a moment. “I have some wine,” Phil says. “Maybe that would help.” 

Dan is tempted to encourage him. They haven’t had any trouble speaking freely enough so far but the idea of a late night phone call while they’re both buzzing on wine makes him think they’ll speak even easier— that they’ll ignore all social graces and have one of those soul-baring convos that can feel raw but also make one feels deeply seen. 

Maybe Dan’s craving something like that. Maybe he thinks people are constantly looking at him, but that he’s rarely seen. 

But then he remembers that, unlike him, Phil has a job with like actual hours and shit. 

“When do you have to be up?” he asks. 

“In six hours,” Phil says. “I’m gonna have a shit morning of it anyways. Might as well have a good night.” 

“Pretty good logic,” Dan laughs. “Can’t argue with it.” 

He hears the distant glug of Phil pouring his wine on the other end of the call. He downs what’s left of his own wine and pours himself another. Two glasses might not get him drunk, but three… well, it’s closer.

“Did I interrupt anything interesting by calling?” Phil asks. 

Dan wonders how honest he should be. “Nothing much,” he says. “Eating chips and social media snooping.” 

“Yeah?” Phil sounds curious. He doesn’t sound afraid. But maybe, Dan thinks, he’s just shit at interpreting tone. 

“Yep,” he says, an overemphasis on the end of the word. He takes another drink. “Doesn’t look like you’re a cannibal. All the foodie shots seem to be non-human-based food.” 

“Key words _seem to be_ ,” Phil laughs. 

“Well, you know from when you snooped on me that I’m not a cannibal.” 

“Rather, I know that if you’re a cannibal you don’t advertise it.” 

Dan is very close to saying _and you know I don’t have a bunch of coupley photos with an ex-someone_ but he stops himself. He knows he’ll get back to lurking later, but for now he doesn’t need to let his irrational possessiveness scare Phil away. 

He likes Phil. He’s surprised by how much and how quickly. 

The chalkboard that hangs on his fridge where he’d written his therapist’s gentle scolding a few weeks before— _you’re allowed to want things_ — is in his peripheral vision. He turns to look at it clearly. 

There was so much of his life which Dan had placed on hold before he felt ready to come out. So much that he held back. Until holding back felt normal, not a means of survival. But he doesn’t have to do that anymore. It’s hard to unlearn, but... he doesn’t have to do that anymore. He’s allowed to _want_ things.

“Do you wanna do something after work tomorrow?” he asks, before he can convince himself he’s being too much. 

“Sure,” Phil says. “Wanna meet at the shop?” 

*

Dan tells Phil to let him know when he gets through the first year of his podcast, he’s pretty close— Dan only releases episodes every other week, and if Phil keeps up the pace he had been it should take no time at all to get through the first 26. 

Dan doesn’t hate them so much after that. He’d figured out more or less what format worked for him by then. He’d figured out what sort of topics actually interested both him and his listeners. Not that he thinks his recent stuff is perfect, by any means. If he waited until something was perfect to release it he’d never put it a single goddamn episode. But it’s stuff he’s proud of. Stuff he doesn’t full-body cringe at the thought of Phil listening to. 

He spends the day while Phil is at work wondering what Phil does when he listens to his podcasts. Wonders if Phil goes on long walks in the park or if he plays a low-focus video game or if he crafts. 

He supposed he could ask Phil. 

But he doesn’t. 

*

Dan grabs two coffees on his way to the print shop to meet Phil. It doesn’t take as long as he’d thought; he caught one of those lucky breaks in foot traffic and didn’t have to wait in line at all. As a result, he shows up at the shop a good ten minutes before close. And he’s too awkward to just stand outside all the while, so he goes in and nods to the employee who had tried to help him the last time he was here, before she’d gone in the back to grab Phil. Before Dan’s entire perception of the business was changed by something akin to a crush. 

She smiles when she recognizes him. “Dan, right?” 

“Yeah,” Dan nods.

“Phil’s wrapping up in the back. Should be done soon.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “C’mere, would you?” 

Dan does. 

“I’m gonna get all overprotective father here, but I mean it… don’t hurt him.” 

“I’m—”

“—if you hurt him, I’ll break your legs. I don’t care how long they are. The last guy who hurt him is a friend of mine. I couldn’t do the leg breaking I so wanted to do. But you don’t have that luxury.” 

Dan makes something like a chuckle. “I won’t hurt him. Not on purpose. Leg breaking or not.” 

She shrugs. “Okay. Good.” 

Dan looks at the clock and wonders if he has enough time to get some real answers out of her. “Who hurt him before?” he asks. 

There’s a shuffling in the back room. The door opens and Dan hears his own voice coming from the phone in Phil’s hand, a podcast where Dan had been ranting about award show nominations playing. Phil blushes when he sees Dan and moves quickly to hit pause. Dan can feel his own blush as well. 

The employee looks between the two of them and smiles. “We about ready to head out for the night, boss?” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/619377497874759680/live-incidentally) !


	9. Chapter 9

Dan carries both coffees for about three blocks before he realises and hands the other to Phil. “You thought I was just hoarding them?” he teases. 

“I didn’t want to assume you’d brought me one,” Phil laughs. 

“Assume away.” Their shoulders bump together and Dan isn’t sure who does the bumping. 

They’re back at Phil’s flat soon enough. Dan tries to map the way in his mind, the route they took from the café and the route they took today from the print shop. He wants it to be a familiar place to him, a place he knows the way to. And it does feel a little familiar when they get to Phil’s door and he fumbles with his keys like he had the last time before getting everything unlocked. 

Once they’re inside and set down their mostly-empty coffee cups, and Phil takes off his jacket to reveal that pesky dye spot on his pale, exposed neck, Dan acts impulsively. He’s not, by and large, an impulsive man. But sometimes he can act and worry about the consequences later, especially if those consequences allow him to feed into the things he hates most about himself in a self-destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s getting better at not doing so on purpose. And right now the consequences aren’t even on his radar when he wraps his arms around Phil’s waist and presses his lips to the dyed spot. 

Phil’s breath hitches and Dan thinks of nothing more than making other dark spots, not with dye this time but with his teeth and careful attention until bruises bloom. 

Somewhere in the back of Dan’s mind, he thinks about how they’d meant to do something. How there was talk of dinner, of video games. Of generally just getting to know each other better. He’s not thinking of any of that when Phil sighs and brings a hand to Dan’s curls, keeping him at Phil’s neck as though Dan ever had any intention of leaving. 

*

They do have that dinner and video games, eventually. After Dan doled enough attention to Phil’s neck to be satisfied and Phil pulled him up to kiss him eagerly. After Dan ground his hips against Phil’s without really meaning to, but found enough enthusiasm there to match his own. After they separated and pressed their foreheads together and both seemed seriously to consider escalating whatever they’d started when Dan’s stomach betrayed them by growling with comic volume. 

They both laugh. Phil promises to order pizza and Dan goes to scan his collection of video games and judge accordingly. Phil has good taste. There are some cases on the shelf that Dan knows well, that are on his own shelf too. There are also a few he’s never played but interested in. He picks a classic, _Mario Kart_ , mostly because he wants to show off. 

Phil holds his own, about a third of the time. But Dan has spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting this skill. Phil isn’t huffy about losing, and when he is Dan can tell none of it is in earnest. Which is fine by him; Phil looks adorable when he’s pouting. 

They’re interrupted when the pizza arrives. They eat and talk and laugh. They’re interrupted again when Dan’s phone buzzes. 

He doesn’t want to answer it. He really doesn’t. The last few days have felt like they had nothing to do with his regular life— instant familiarity with Phil and not much else. But he checks the screen and sees that it’s Timothy. His stomach sinks and he remembers a 10 am deadline tomorrow that he’s nowhere near meeting. The episode is written, it’s just not recorded or edited or anything else. 

“Work stuff,” he says. “Sorry.” Phil nods at the phone, mouth full of pizza but telling him he should answer. 

“Dan, you’re not dead,” is the first thing Timothy says when Dan answers. 

“Not as far as I know,” Dan says. 

“Well, how’re things going?” 

“Fine,” Dan lies. “I’ll have everything ready to go.” 

“On time?” 

“On time… probably.” 

Timothy sighs. “You’ll call by eight if it’s late for sure?” 

Dan nods then remembers he’s on the phone. “Yep,” he says. 

“Okay. I’ll let you get back to it.” 

When he hangs up, Dan looks at the pizza and game controllers and very distracting guy in front of him. It’s the opposite of _getting back to it_ , what he’d intended for his evening. 

“All good?” Phil asks. 

Dan frowns. “Just lied through my teeth about a deadline I’m definitely way behind on.” He sets his plate on the coffee table and stands. “I gotta head home and start working so I don’t miss it by too much.” 

Phil frowns as well. “Want a hand?” 

Dan wants to say yes if only to avoid having to say goodbye. But he doesn’t want to drag Phil into the technical side of podcast making, the boring audio levels and effects and cuts. “It’s like editing and shit,” he shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“Editing?” Phil laughs. “I haven’t bragged about my degrees yet?” 

Dan doesn’t have any degrees to brag about, so it hadn’t occurred to him that Phil might. “Get bragging, Lester?” 

“Masters in Video Post Production. We did enough on audio, it’s all muscle memory, I think I might be of some help.” He stands as well, setting aside his half-eaten slice. “Besides, I’ve binged a good twenty episodes of your show, I think I could nail the tone.” 

Dan leans closer and kisses him. “Want me to pay you?” he laughs. 

“Pay me in pizza,” Phil says, smiling before kissing Dan back, “you can buy the next one.” 

*

Dan’s second bedroom is set up with soundproof foam, his desk and ergonomic chair, the microphone and headphones he wears every other week. It suddenly feels a little small, having Phil here. He’s never had a second person on the podcast before, never even had a second person watch him record. The burning in his cheeks is something he wishes he was better at hiding, but Phil doesn’t seem to notice.

Instead, Phil is clicking around the software of Dan’s laptop, looking familiar enough but also curious. He tells Dan it’s been a few years since he poked around. 

Dan leaves him to it while he grabs them both a glass of water— his because he really needs to get recording, and Phil’s because he really wants to be a good host. Phil thanks him when he hands over the glass. The smile is so nice, the smile Dan realises he thinks of when he thinks of Phil. Then he clamps that thought far in the back of his mind; it’s hopelessly sappy for how new all of this is. 

“What are you talking about this week?” Phil asks. 

Dan pulls up the script on his phone. “Who’s the better Brontë.”

“Sexy,” Phil laughs. “Who _is_?”

“Tie between Anne and Emily,” Dan tells him. “Anne wrote the better books but Emily once got bit by a rabid dog and cauterized the wound herself so she wouldn’t have to tell anyone. That’s too badass not to bump her up. Charlotte’s fine, the competition is just too stiff.” 

“So you’re like a classic lit nerd?” 

“Not usually,” Dan shakes his head. “This started with a night of rabbit hole Buzzfeed quizzing. Followed by Wikipedia deep dives on the sisters. And binging the audiobooks for _Wuthering Heights_ , _Jane Eyre_ , and _Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. Turns out I have opinions.” 

“Can’t wait to hear them.” Phil sits cross-legged in the chair he dragged from Dan’s dining table. Dan turns his attention to the record button, to the audio levels, to his throat which he clears. He tries to swallow his nerves, tries almost to pretend Phil isn’t even here and that this is just another podcast like all the others he’s recorded. 

And it starts that way. Until Phil laughs at a joke Dan makes about Charlotte’s _lifelong friend and correspondent_ , Ellen Nussey. 

“We all know what historians mean when they say shit like that,” Dan says, “about how they’d write letters declaring their love for each other and wanting to be together all the time… means Charlotte was enjoying the Nussey, amirite ladies?” 

Phil laughs. Dan sees the spike in the recording waves; it was picked up. 

He decides, for no real reason at all, to roll with it. “Those at home, you may have just heard my in-studio visitor, Phil. Anything you wanna share with the class?” he asks. 

Phil leans a little closer to the microphone. He doesn’t have headphones or anything, so Dan knows he has no real idea how loud he’s being but figures they can adjust what they need to later. “Just would’ve guessed old Charlotte would be on your list if she had a secret girlfriend. That’s almost as badass as the rabid dog story.” 

“Almost,” Dan smiles. “But I can’t bump her to the top just for being a fellow queer. She lived longer than both her sisters and kinda spent a lot of time trying to fuck with their images. Don’t sit well, mate.” 

“Are we even all that sure she’s gay? What if this is like the only real instance of gal pals?” 

“I mean, I have a quote here that Charlotte wrote to Ellen, ‘Don’t desert me, don’t be horrified at me. You know what I am.’ What does that sound like to you?” 

“Gay,” Phil shrugs. 

“Gay,” Dan nods. Then he looks at the length of time they’ve been recording. They need to wrap things up. “Maybe trying to rank them was a dumb idea. They’re all pretty great.” 

“I’d think they would be. They died like two hundred years ago and we’re still talking about them!” 

“Who’s the best Brontë?” Dan asks in as close to an announcer’s voice as he will ever have. “The friends we made along the way.” 

Phil laughs, but doesn’t say anything more. It allows Dan to thank the listeners, the network, the artist who performs his intro and outro music. And to thank Phil for being his first, impromptu guest. Again, Phil doesn’t say anything, but smiles wide. Dan stops the recording. 

*

It is very late at night by the time they wrap up the edit. It’s still plenty of time before tomorrow’s deadline though, and for that Dan is very grateful. But he isn’t tired. They’d started sipping some wine and snacking on crisps early in the editing process and now sleep is the furthest thing from Dan’s mind. He’s too riled up, got too much energy. 

There had been a moment after recording, when Dan took his headphones off and turned the fan back on, where they were both quiet. Then at the same time they began to ask, “Was that okay?” and laughed through apologising for taking over each other. 

“Was it okay that I basically crashed your podcast?” Phil asked, trying again. “You’ve never had a guest.” 

“Sure,” Dan nodded, “I wouldn’t have pulled you in if I didn’t want to. Was it okay that I basically dragged you on? You had no prep or anything.”

Phil leans even closer. The room is really too small for this. “Yeah,” he says. “It was good. Maybe next time it’ll be a topic I actually know something about.” 

The _maybe next time_ terrifies and thrills Dan. He lets it sit in the palm of his hand and suggests the wine and crisps. 

*

Dan sends the finished podcast to Timothy with a snarky little “Told you it’d be on time,” while Phil pokes through Dan’s video game shelf much like Dan had been doing to his earlier. Then he seems to notice something Dan had shoved between a chair and the wall. 

“This what I think it is?” he says, smiling a wine-drunk smile. 

“If you think it’s a professional DDR mat that I bought off eBay years ago, then yes it is.” This hadn’t exactly been the outlet for his energy that Dan had been expecting, but once more the prospect of getting to show off for Phil is tempting. 

They’re clumsier as they play than they would be if they weren’t drunk, but Dan still has enough of this ingrained in his limbs to make a decent showing. Phil flails about and does terribly but is so earnest in each attempt that Dan can’t look away. Once they’re out of breath and sleep actually does sound appealing, it’s approaching 2 am. Dan insists Phil stay over instead of stumbling to the tube at this time and in this state. 

He’s even enough of a gentleman to offer Phil the bed while he takes the sofa. Phil’s having none of it. He’ll take the sofa. 

While Dan is grabbing a pillow and blankets, his drunk brain catches up with him and he realises he’s a fucking idiot for mentioning the sofa in the first place. But he can’t exactly rescind the offer now and say, “Um, actually, come cuddle up in my bed with me, won’t you?” 

Besides, the tiredness seems to hit Phil all at once. He’s yawning, eyes drooping, and he plonks down onto the sofa before Dan even finishes making it up as a little bed. Dan’s about to stumble into his own room when Phil reaches his hand out. “Kiss goodnight, Danny,” Phil says, lips puckered. 

Dan leans forward, kisses him, feels a bit dizzy when he leans back up. “Thanks for helping,” he says. Phil is already mostly asleep, but he grunts something Dan has to interpret as _you’re welcome_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/619747921933500416/live-incidentally) !


	10. Chapter 10

The bright screen of Dan’s phone tells him it’s only half-past four when he wakes up and squints at the time. He’s barely slept at all, hardly two hours. But he’s feeling less of that soft sleepy drunkenness now, and just feeling incredible thirst. The glass on his bedside table is already empty, as he’d downed it before falling asleep. 

He stands. It’s too quick for his long body, and he plops back down on the bed while his blood rushes to his extremities. He tries standing again a few minutes later. He feels less like he’s going to pass out. 

The layout of the flat is plenty familiar to him, as are these middle of the night water quests. Most of the time he doesn’t bother with any lights; hell, sometimes he doesn’t even bother to open his eyes. Just shuffles along towards the kitchen with a hand lazily reaching in front of him. 

He’s halfway through the lounge when he hears a sound that reminds him that he isn’t alone. That he has a guest on his sofa. A guest he’s very, very fond of. 

The sound is a sigh. 

A breathy sigh falling from Phil’s lips. 

Dan freezes— he opens his eyes wide and sees, from the light of the city pouring from his window, the outline of Phil spread across his sofa. He doesn’t know how Phil hasn’t heard him yet, but he’s terrified of the possibility that he will. 

Because Phil is mid-wank and Dan knows he’s shouldn’t fucking look… but he’s only human. 

Most of Phil is bathed in shadow, but what Dan can see is enough to make his head spin. Phil’s thrown the t-shirt he’d been wearing all night off, it’s hanging on the sofa’s arm. His hand is under the borrowed blanket, moving rhythmically. There’s a flush along his chest and neck that Dan can almost see in this light. 

As happens only all too often in London, a siren sounds below. Phil doesn’t even seem to notice and Dan takes the opportunity to turn and shuffle quickly back into his bedroom. 

*

Dan’s throat is burning. He never did get that water, but more so than that, he’s swallowing down all the sounds trying to slip from his mouth and that burns more. 

He’s facedown on his bed, hoping the pillow muffles his deep and shaking breaths enough that Phil won’t hear him. He’s grinding against his flannel sheets and when he moves a little too quickly, to his horror, the headboard smacks against his wall. He could swear it echoes through the entire fucking city. He says, “Fuck,” and the irritation is lost halfway through the single-syllable word before turning into a whimper. 

There’s a voice in his head telling him to freeze, to be still, to listen for any signs that Phil heard him. But if he doesn’t move his hips and give his dick that craved-for friction, he’s pretty sure he’s just gonna die right here. And surely Phil finding his dead body in the morning would be worse than being heard. 

Maybe Phil will just think Dan’s tossing and turning. 

Maybe Phil won’t realise Dan saw him only a minute ago. 

Maybe it isn’t Phil who is suddenly knocking on Dan’s bedroom door. 

“Dan?” Phil’s voice sounds from the other side, low and gruff and with an edge of hesitance. 

“Yeah?” Dan says. He turns around, sits up in bed. Phil opens the door. He’s still only in his pants. Dan isn’t exactly proud of the whine he makes, seeing that. 

“Can’t sleep either?” Phil says. He smiles. That half-shadowed smile warms Dan to his toes. It breaks through the fog of want and craving and ache; it reminds him how much he likes Phil even when his dick isn’t insistent. 

“Get over here,” Dan laughs. 

Phil doesn’t waste any time. He crawls into the bed and gets a leg on either side of Dan. He leans forward and kisses him hungrily, biting at Dan’s lips and tangling his fingers into Dan’s hair. He’s hard as he grinds his hips against Dan’s, and Dan really fucking wishes he’d ever had a coherent thought in his life but it just doesn’t seem like something that’s going to happen for him right now. 

Instead, Dan gets his arms around Phil’s shoulders and pulls him even closer. He wants Phil as close as possible. 

*

There’s a horrible buzz from the living room. It takes Dan a second to realise it’s not his neighbour's incessant drilling finally barreled into his flat, but rather Phil’s phone going off on the coffee table. 

Phil doesn’t even notice. He’s drooling on Dan’s shoulder and Dan would happily let him keep doing so if the sound of the vibrating phone against furniture wasn’t slowly growing more grating. He rolls onto his side and that get’s Phil moving like he’s about to wake up. 

“Go get your phone, dingus,” Dan says when Phil opens his eyes. 

It seems to take a second for Phil to figure out what he means. Then the sleepy calm is wiped from his face and he untangles himself from Dan’s sheets and heads into the other room. 

Dan hears him talking to whoever had called. “Hello? Yeah… no, no, just sleeping. Well, it’s early! Yeah… of course… German apple cake, what else? Okay… bye, Bry.” 

There are a few seconds after Phil hangs up the call where they’re still in different rooms. Dan looks up and his ceiling and lets out a long breath and wants Phil nearby again already. There’s so much of him that’s terrified by that, but he can’t deny it’s what he wants all the same. 

Phil appears in the doorway. “Sorry,” he says, leaning against the wall. He looks so fucking good Dan thinks, noting the bruise he’d worked hard at last night over Phil’s collarbone. “Thought it was work, but it was just a friend.” 

“Do you have to work today?” Dan asks. He tries not to frown. He doesn’t want Phil to know how crazy clingy he is already. 

Phil nods. Then he clears his throat. “Listen, I have like this board game potluck night afterwards, it’s like a monthly thing and basically the only socializing I do…” 

Dan sees he looks nervous. He tries to push his headache and the sunlight pouring through his window aside to remember if he had made any plans with Phil that he might be nervous about trying to break right now. He doesn’t think they had. “Cool,” Dan says, nodding. He hopes it’s lacking commitment. 

“Wanna go?” Phil asks. 

“Oh…” Dan knows his surprise is too obvious across his face. He knows he can’t hide something like that first thing in the morning. 

“They’re really nice, my friends. I know that’s nerve-wracking, to be like ‘come hang out with me and all these strangers’ but I think you’ll really like them,” Phil walks over to the bed, but sits near the edge. “Unless you’re sick of me which I would totally understand.” He laughs, a shaky laugh. A laugh Dan doesn’t trust at all. “We _have_ been hanging out a lot.”

Dan sits up. He inches closer to Phil. He gets a hand around the back of Phil’s neck and pulls him close for a kiss, morning breath and all. “Should I bring anything for the potluck bit?” he asks. 

Phil smiles and moves to kiss Dan back, first whispering, “Don’t worry about it.” 

*

Dan spends the day while Phil’s at work trying not to get anxious about that night. He fails, of course, but he tries. 

He googles a recipe for spinach and artichoke dip, heads down to the shops to buy the ingredients and two baguettes, then makes three batches before it looks quite right. He goes through his list of podcast ideas and doesn’t find a single one he thinks he could focus on right now and abandons the thought of getting actual work done. He answers a text from his mum that’s a few days old about how he’s been doing and if he’ll be home for his birthday. 

Somehow, the day passes, and he meets Phil at his flat. Phil kisses him when he opens the door, kisses him like he really missed Dan and Dan lets that idea sit in his chest without being picked apart. 

They spend the tube ride with Phil telling stories about everyone who is going to be there and Dan trying desperately to remember enough bits and pieces that he won’t come off like a total interloper. 

The woman with bright pink hair who answers the door seems surprised to see Dan stood next to Phil. She covers that surprise quickly, and by the time Dan learns her name is Bryony she’s smiling wide and pointing him towards the kitchen for them to drop off the food. 

Bryony has a large dining table with six chairs, three of them filled, sat around it. They’re all friendly about introductions and Dan thinks maybe he can handle this if he just treats it like the Christmas cocktail parties he attended for the office job he held through uni. That is, until a guy at the end of the table, called Harris, asks, “So you’re the new Brandon, then?” 

He asks it with a laugh. He asks it like he isn’t trying to be cruel. A couple of people at the table laugh as well, but a few have gone frozen. Dan turns to Phil and sees that, contrary to any bet he would’ve placed beforehand, he’s gone even paler. Phil seems rooted to the spot, unable or unwilling to answer. So Dan gives it his best shot. 

“It’s a little too early to call me the new anything,” he says, giving what he hopes is a casual shrug. The room itself seems to exhale. 

Bryony, Dan, and Phil all sit in the empty chairs and everyone starts talking about tonight’s game of choice— Power Grid— and going over the rules. Dan’s glad he’s played it before, because he can hardly hear anything over the buzz of his own brain. He wishes he could get Phil alone. Wishes he could make sure Phil is alright. 

They’ve spent an inordinate amount of time together since they met, sliding almost unfairly easily into each other’s lives. But at the same time… it’s been just over a week. They don’t really know each other. They don’t owe each other anything, all these deep dark scars of who they were before they met. 

They haven’t even slapped a word on whatever is actually happening here. 

Dan just knows he likes Phil. He really, really likes Phil. He likes being around him and making him laugh and learning more and more about him. It has never been easy for Dan to believe that someone could enjoy being around him for more than small doses. It has never been easy for Dan to see anything but a ticking clock over someone’s head: a countdown until his expiration date, a countdown until they can’t stand him anymore. 

Phil’s clock seems endless. 

It scares him, how much Phil _doesn’t_ scare him. 

But if the idea of Dan being the new Brandon is enough to make Phil check out, Dan doesn’t want to do that to him. 

*

They leave early, after only one game. Before the food is even dug into. Phil was the second person out of the game and pulled his phone from his pocket and said he was calling an uber. Dan, despite actually having a pretty good cache of materials, dipped from the game and gave a general farewell of, “So nice meeting all of you, thank you,” and a quick wave before following Phil who was already out the door. 

Dan looks over Phil’s shoulder at his phone screen and sees the car won’t even be here for another eleven minutes. But it’s a warm June night as they stand on the steps to Bryony’s apartment building; he doesn’t mind breathing fresh air. Especially if it means he can get Phil’s mind off of what Harris said. 

“Brandon and I were going to be married,” Phil says, still looking at his phone like he can will the car to arrive faster. 

“Oh,” Dan says. He obviously knew that Brandon had been a big relationship for Phil. Somehow, he hadn’t guessed that Brandon was _that_ big. “Phil, you don’t have to get into it…”

Phil looks up from the screen. “No?” 

“Not if you don’t want to.” 

Phil puts his phone in his pocket and steps closer to Dan and pulls him in to kiss him. He backs Dan up until his back is against the building’s brick wall and Dan lets the kiss mean whatever the hell Phil needs it to mean. Dan’s a little breathless by the time Phil moves to his cheek, his chin, the little silver hoop in his right ear. 

The car pulls up. They both climb in. 

Dan feels Phil reach for his hand which was in the space between them. They thread their fingers together.

“Brandon and I were going to be married,” Phil says again, this time looking at Dan. He can see the lights washing over his face, pronouncing the curve of his bird nose and the mole by his chin. “I ended it about a year ago. And I haven’t really dated like… _anyone_ since.”

Dan nods. He’s not sure what he would say even if he could speak. It feels important that Phil is telling him this. He’s glad he never got around to that full social media stalking. 

“You’re not the new Brandon,” Phil says, squeezing his hand. “You’re someone very different, I think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/620016575875006464/live-incidentally) !


	11. Chapter 11

There’s a buzzing somewhere under Phil’s head. It keeps going: once, twice, three times. It echoes through his haze of fairly heavy sleep. He reaches under his pillow and finds his phone. 

Phil hears a soft snore next to him and he remembers where he is. In Dan’s flat, in Dan’s bed, with Dan asleep beside him. 

It’s plenty dark out, and he doesn’t feel he’s gotten much sleep at all. He’s about ready to drift back when his phone buzzes a fourth time in his hand. So he carefully untangles himself from Dan’s sheets, heads over to Dan’s desk where he’d left his glasses, and crawls back into the warmth he’s already so hooked on. 

He was right, he realises when he looks at his phone screen. It’s not all that late, just past one in the morning. But he and Dan had thoroughly worn themselves out when they got back from Bryony’s. By eating handfuls of dry cereal together and by Phil recounting the whole messy breakup— how Brandon was both picking fights and barreling forward with life plans by the end, how Phil felt like he was on an escalator moving so slowly but in a determined and unyielding direction, how eventually he had to look at Brandon and tell him though it hurt to do so that not having a reason to break up isn’t a reason to stay together… how they’re simply not the same thing… how he had to ask himself whether Brandon and marriage and being stuck as this version of himself he was when he and Brandon first met, this version who Brandon still saw him as even if Phil wasn’t all too sure what this new version looked like or wanted, if any of that was what he wanted, and how the answer was no. And then there was a terrifying moment where he feared he said too much. A terrifying moment where he thought Dan would decide this was just too much too soon of something he didn’t actually give a shit about. 

And after, when that dismissal didn’t come, through other means of being worn out. Like Phil finding an appendectomy scar on Dan’s otherwise smooth skin and Dan showing off how weirdly flexible hours of living room YouTube tutorial yoga has made him. 

So it’s likely he would be sleeping just as soundly as Dan is right now if it weren’t for the slew of text messages he’s gotten. 

One from Harris, _“Hey man Dan seems really cool, hope you bring him round again”_ which is nice, if heavy-handed, which basically is how Phil would describe Harris. 

Three from Bryony. _“you good?”_ she asked. Then she sent, _“phil”_ and _“PHIL”_

_“I was sleeping 😩”_ Phil sends her. 

_“don’t care, you left early and i gotta make you spill. you’ve been holding back on me, Lester!”_

Phil hears Dan mumble in his sleep. He doesn’t want to wake Dan and knows that Bryony isn’t gonna let this be a short convo. But he also doesn’t want to step into the other room and miss any other mumbles. 

Bryony texts before he can answer her. “ _how long have you been seeing this guy! why didn’t you tell me about him when i’ve been giving you so much shit?”_

_“I just started seeing him, Bry. It’s been… like a week”_

“ _sure, a week and you look at him Like That? i don’t think so. you brought him to fucking game night! you didn’t bring he-who-shall-not-be-named round game night for like a year”_

“ _Dan’s different”_ Phil sends. It feels too soon to be so sure about that, he keeps waiting for things not to feel so right with Dan, not to feel like he’s slid into place. Because it’s too easy. Because he doesn’t get this lucky. Because his life already looks so different from the haze he’s settled in for too long, and it seems wrong to think that it’s due to a chance meeting of someone that makes all his idiosyncrasies not just forgivable. But likeable. 

There’s gotta be another shoe, and it’s gotta drop some time. 

But for now Dan feels different. And he makes Phil feel different. And Phil really fucking likes feeling different like this. 

“ _so you didn’t cry when you sucked him off then?”_ Bryony asks.

“ _I’m going back to sleep😑😴”_

“ _😘_ ”

*

The next time Phil wakes up is decidedly more pleasant. He feels a big warm hand running along his spine. He feels soft lips just under his ear. He feels an insistent little rock of hips against his. Phil reaches up and tangles his fingers into the curls he finds near him. Soft warm curls like the soft warm world he’s in right now. 

Dan mutters against the skin at the back of Phil’s neck, “You’ve got freckles everywhere.” He feels Dan’s lips travel to where he can only assume Dan is finding more. 

He turns his head and Dan kisses him. Morning breath and all, kisses him with one hand teasing a nipple and another gripping his hip.

Phil doesn’t want to compare Dan to Brandon. It seems unfair to both of them, really. But Brandon never once in all the time they’d been together kissed Phil’s morning breath. Never prioritized soft, warm slow morning sex over something gross and human. 

He pulls Dan on top of him. Let’s his hands run over Dan’s sides and back and thighs. He watches Dan’s face when he wraps a hand around his cock. He groans appreciatively when Dan’s come messes his stomach. He nearly passes out when Dan travels down to get his mouth around Phil and stops being slow and soft, instead sucking eagerly and earnestly and swallowing him down when he comes. 

Dan moves back up and kisses Phil after, and instead of just morning breath Phil can now taste himself in the kiss. Gross and human, and so fucking good. 

*

It takes another eight days for Phil to get through the first year of Dan’s podcast. In the meantime, they’ve spent the night together five times and had fourteen meals together and Phil helped edit but didn’t sit in on the recording of a podcast where Dan talked about music video budgets. 

He’s at work when he gets to it, in the back and filling out orders. He likes to listen to Dan’s podcast while at work. It’s not a voice he thinks he’ll ever get sick of, even if he’d rather have the real thing sitting in front of him. 

The episode begins with Dan cursing the passage of time. “A year? A whole year of this, how is that even possible?” Then he gets a nervous chuckle out and says this is going to be a different sort of episode. “It’s gonna be like weirdly personal,” he says, “You’ve earned it if you stuck with me this long. Welcome to episode 26, _Daniel and Depression_.”

Phil doesn’t get a single print made while he listens. Just sits on his stool captivated. He’s not entirely surprised, based off of some passing comments Dan makes and the fact he knows Dan’s in therapy. But it’s such a raw episode. It’s a hell of a lot more vulnerable than any he’s heard yet. 

It’s an episode that makes a lot of things click into place. It makes Phil think about how insistent Dan is on staying hydrated, on going outside for a walk or a run every few days. It makes Phil think about how he’d always considered himself a shut-in, but compared to Dan who doesn’t seem to have his own version of Martyn or Bryony or Hannah he’s a regular social butterfly. It makes him think about how much harder bad days must be if you feel well and truly alone. 

He pauses his podcast app before it can move on to the next episode after he’s finished. He texts Dan, _“Hell of a way to finish the first year. It’s a really, really good episode. I’m sure it helped a lot of people💛”_ and hopes it’s the right thing to say. 

Dan texts back, “ _takeout tonight?”_

“ _At mine?_ ” Phil sends. 

“ _yee, i’ll pick you up_ ” 

*

Shortly before close, Phil hears the chime of the door to the shop opening. He’s doing the last bits of cleanup for the night and sees a body in the doorway to the back out of his peripheral vision. “Almost done, babe,” he says. 

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” he hears his brother’s voice teasing him. 

Phil turns and sees Martyn and can feel the blush spreading across his face. He hasn’t spoken to Martyn since the night he sent Bryony over to check on him. He hasn’t actually seen his brother for much longer than that. It’s unusual for them. They’re usually quite close. 

“Hey,” he says, still rooted to the spot. 

“Sorry to barge in,” Martyn says. “Just wanted to make sure you’re good. Mum’s being Mum again.” Phil knows what that means; their mum’s worrying about him again. 

“Yeah,” Phil says as he starts to clean up again. “Things are fine.” He heard the door chime once more, and Hannah shouting they’re closed and Dan that teasing he has rights. 

Martyn turns towards the sounds. Dan appears behind him, two coffees in his hand like he’d had the first time he came to pick Phil up from work. Despite the anxious shaking of his hands, Phil is so fucking endeared by the gesture. 

“Dan, this is my brother Martyn,” Phil says, grabbing the last pile of rubbish keeping him from leaving this room. “Mar, this my… Dan.” 

Dan balances one of the coffees on top of the other to free his right hand and give Martyn’s a shake. “Nice to meet you,” he smiles. That same charming as hell smile he’d given at game night, an ease of meeting strangers even if it’s a performance that Phil can’t even properly fake. 

Martyn’s face isn’t holding back his surprise. “You too, mate,” he says. 

“Tell Mum I’m fine, alright?” Phil says, grabbing his keys. 

Martyn nods. “She’d like you up to visit sometime soon. Sometime in the summer if you’re still not doing Florida.” 

“Fine,” he nods. He takes the coffee from Dan and drinks half of it in one gulp. 

He sees Hannah holding her purse and watching the three of them like it’s a soap opera. He gives her a look and she thankfully says, “C’mon boys, let's lock up. I got places to be.” 

*

Phil ignores the buzz of his phone in his pocket which he’s sure is either Martyn or Corn texting him as he and Dan walk back to his flat. He doesn’t want to be holding his brother at arm’s length. It’s just a matter of energy. What does he have the energy for right now? And the idea of his family, his family he loves so much but just takes a lot of goddamn energy, is not on the list right now. Tonight it’s just Dan, Dan and dinner and whatever it is they’re gonna talk about because they always talk for hours and hours. 

Dan says Phil’s brother seems cool. “Cooler than mine, who will be better once he stops being like painfully twenty-one years old.” 

“Oh, he’s got some of that Howell pretentiousness I’ve grown real fond of?” Phil teases. Dan pokes his ribs in retaliation. “Well, I’ll add the younger brother to my Dan Facts.”

Dan groans. “Ugh, you’re still compiling those, are you?” 

“Always,” Phil laughs. 

“Go on then,” Dan sighs, a big over-dramatic sigh. “Guess I’m ready to hear them.” 

Phil fiddles with his glasses the way he remembers Dan miming weeks ago. “Daniel Howell: podcaster extraordinaire, too good at _Mario Kart_ it should be illegal, a good listener, a good kisser, tall… like _really_ tall, owns too many stripes, has a younger brother and a fit mum and a chipped front tooth.” 

Dan smiles wide, revealing that poor tooth. “Not bad,” he laughs. 

They order Thai food and watch _Titan AE_ because Phil can’t believe Dan doesn’t know who Don Bluth is. Afterwards Dan throws two topics for the next podcast he’s torn between for Phil to choose: adopting vs purchasing pets, and the international dateline. 

“Oh pets,” Phil says, “that’s a no-brainer.” 

They then fall into telling each other about all the pets they’ve had. Phil talks about Holly the house rabbit and the hamsters he bred and his goldfish that lived for way longer than a goldfish has any right to. Dan talks about the dog his parents got right around the time he was born, and the hamster he got that was too smart for her own good and ran away, and the dog his mum adopted a few years ago. 

Phil looks around his mostly-lifeless flat. Him and Dan and the houseplants are the only things there that breathe. “I’d love to adopt a sweet grey little senior dog,” he says. “Don’t think I’d keep a dog alive right now, to be fair, but it’d be so nice.” 

Dan shows off the research he’s already done for the topic by saying, “It’s not just dogs and cats you can adopt from shelters. Horses?” 

“I’m _not_ getting a horse,” Phil laughs. 

“More hamsters, a fish?”

“A fish I could maybe handle,” Phil says. He points to the cabinet near his bookshelf which only has some trinkets and an empty bowl which used to have sweets in it. “Could go right there.” 

They spend much of the evening dreaming up what the tank would look like, what plants Phil would put in it, what tacky decorations he’d insist on despite Dan’s rolling eyes. Dan explains what he remembers of the nitrogen cycle. Phil watches him talk and takes in most of it. Some of it is blurred out by Phil watching Dan’s hand gestures, or by the way he bites his lips when trying to remember what he meant to say.

*

“What’s in Florida?” Dan asks before they fall asleep. He’s got his head on Phil’s chest and Phil really hopes he doesn’t notice the way his heart starts beating a little faster at the question. 

“Loads of things,” Phil says. “Disney World and Waffle House and friendly but crazy Americans.” 

Dan laughs. He yawns. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to press the issue, snuggling a little closer under the sheets. 

Phil feels like he’s gotten away with something, and like he should be relieved, but he isn’t. Instead, he just feels like he’s keeping things from Dan that aren’t and shouldn’t be a big deal. The decision not to tell him is more important than the things themselves. So he sighs and holds Dan a little closer despite the heat of the summer and the heat of their bodies. He says, “My family is pretty obsessed with Florida holidays. They’ll go like every year. I’ll go along most years.” 

“Not this year?” Dan asks. He’s asking quietly, almost a whisper. Phil wonders if he’s half asleep.

“No. Had other plans, and those fell through, and now I just really don’t want to bother.” 

Dan lifts his head. “Other plans?” he says with a frown. He knows what Phil meant, Phil sees that clear enough. “I think after something like that, some time in Florida would fix most people. Eating American pancakes and burrowing your toes in the sand.” 

“If I could do that without all the family included, I’d jump on it.” 

Dan nods. “Families are tough. I don’t ever really go home except Christmas and birthdays. I’m… it’s getting better. We’re all trying now, but it sucks.” 

Phil frowns. He feels a heaviness in his stomach for both Dan and himself. “I love being around my family,” he insists. “I love going back home and eating all my mum’s good food and playing _Scrabble_ with my dad. I used to hang out with my brother all the time. But I kinda… when everything happened, I reacted pretty badly.” 

“Everything with…” Dan trails off.

“They didn’t like Brandon,” Phil nods. “They didn’t say so, not outright. But they held him at arm's length and the first time I brought him back home to meet them, my dad pulled him aside and did that _let’s go have a talk_ thing and Brandon told me later that they were pretty shit to him. They just…” Phil sighs and sits up and runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t really know. They were fine when I came out to them. Kinda. Mostly. Like they were shocked but they didn’t kick me out or anything. But I think seeing me actually engaged to a guy made it terrifyingly real, like _Oh, Phil isn’t faking this. He’s really not gonna marry a woman_.” 

Dan’s frown is furrowing his brow, and seems carried into his entire body. The slump of his shoulders, the way he’s leaning towards Phil but notably giving him space. “That sucks,” he says. “I’m sorry they were like that.” 

Phil shakes his head. “It’s worse for a lot of other queer people, eh.” He shrugs. “And we’re fine. They love me, we’re _fine_. I just used to go up there to see them like every couple of months and used to text my brother every day and now… I don’t.” 

“You don’t have to say it’s fine if it doesn’t feel fine,” Dan says. He says it so readily that Phil wonders if he’s quoting his therapist. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he says, because it makes sense. Even if he’s not soaking it all the way through. 

“You wanna know how I came out to my family?” 

Phil nods. Dan grabs his phone from among the pillows and scootches closer. He opens his email app and goes to a saved folder. He clicks one that’s almost a month old by now, and Phil reads _“Hello gang, I’ve been meaning to talk to you all for a while, something quite important that should be disclosed at some point. I thought I would around Christmas, then Mum’s Birthday, then last Easter Sunday etc but every time I meant to, I either felt like I would ruin the mood of the day or I just felt awkward and didn’t want to. So I decided just to email you all instead which is really inappropriate and just weird, but that somehow seems appropriate for me and at least I’ll just finally say it. Basically I’m gay.”_

Phil doesn’t mean to laugh. He really doesn’t. It’s just _so_ Dan. “Effective,” he smiles. 

“Here was dear old Mum’s response,” Dan says, scrolling down. _“Blimey that must be a load off after all this time !!. Needless to say I love you with all my heart and always will , Mum xxxx”_ The punctuation and the x’s and the enthusiasm fits with what little he knows about Karen Howell. He can see her standing in his print shop and saying the exact same thing, windblown hair and dimpled smile and all. 

“They were all good like this?” Phil asks. 

Dan laughs. “No, god no, does anyone have that kind of coming out story? Most were good. The ones I really needed to be good were, like Mum and brother and the grandparents.” 

“I can’t even imagine what my parents would’ve said if I’d sent an email,” Phil lays back down. 

“How’d you do it?” 

“Got caught,” Phil says. “Lost track of time, had someone over, didn’t hear the car pull up.” 

Dan’s frown is back. “Jesus.” 

“It was a long time ago,” Phil laughs. “It was horrible then, but I guess it’s funny now.” 

“Was it… graphic?” 

“There were bits in orifices, that’s all I’m saying!” 

“Jesus,” Dan says again. He’s finally laughing. “Phil, I hate to say it, but I think we figured out why their reaction wasn’t all that great.” 

They both fall into the tangled sheets giggling sleepily. There’s some other hushed joking and some quick smooches, but before Phil falls asleep he wonders if there isn’t a little truth to that. If a memory of a traumatic event more than a decade old might be a little warped. If his parents were a little more concerned about their son getting up to some clandestine lovin’ no matter the gender of the person involved. 

Sure, they’d later make some comments about how young he is and about the possibility of a “nice girl”— but he was angry and he was hurt, and is that the best lens by which to remember these things? 

He’s too sleepy to parse it out right now. He hopes he’ll remember the hint of epiphany tomorrow. Hopes he’ll be able to muddle it over while bent over his inks and dyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/620382112481148928/live-incidentally) !


	12. Chapter 12

Marge is clacking away through online orders when she lets out a sputtering laugh, like an old car starting up. Phil would recognize Marge’s laugh anywhere. He hopes she never commits any sort of crime that would require him to have to pick her out of a laughter line up because he really doesn’t want to have to be the reason she ends up in jail. 

“Thought it would take longer than this,” she says, waving Phil over. 

Phil sees an order from a now very familiar name. Karen Howell wants a black t-shirt with an image he recognizes as the family dog, Colin, wrapped in a rainbow flag. Phil agrees— it’s the first week of June, and a monthly shirt order from Dan’s mum is a little more frequent than he had thought she’d be making when Dan first asked Phil to blacklist her. Of course, a lot of things have changed since then. 

He texts Dan, “ _Any reason your mum would need my services?_ ”

“ _oh god what’d she do?_ ” Dan texts back. “ _you’re leaving me for my hot mum, i knew it_ ”

“ _Yes, okay that makes sense. She placed an order for your consolation prize_ ”

“ _don’t fill it, you said you wouldn’t_ ”

“ _I said I’d tell you if she placed another order, not that I’d turn her away_ ” 

“ _you seduced me under false pretenses >:( _” 

“ _It might not even be for you!_ ” Phil argues. 

Dan’s answer takes a good seven minutes. It took long enough that Phil went and stood by the Keurig to make his afternoon coffee. “ _it is. it’s my birthday next thursday_ ” 

Phil forgets how many things he still has to learn about Dan. He may have jumped with both feet into the deep end, fallen too far too fast, but something as big and simple as Dan’s birthday he didn’t know until now. 

He remembers Hannah going off about astrology a few days ago and teases, “ _You’re a gemini? Maybe this won’t work out :((_ ”

“ _we’re literally disgustingly compatible, mr aquarius_ ” 

Phil’s still giggling when he clicks to call Dan. “I have to fill the order now that I know it’s a birthday present!” he says when Dan answers. 

“I’ll make it worth your while if you decline it and block her email,” Dan says. 

“How exactly will you do that?” Phil asks. 

“You’re on the clock, don’t wanna get you hot and bothered.” 

“I’m the manager, I can get as hot and bothered as I like.” 

Dan laughs. Then he sighs. “Is it bad? What she ordered?”

“Of course not, she has great taste and I do quality work. You’ll love it. Or you’ll pretend to when she gives it to you because she’s really trying, Dan.” 

“So it’s gay?” Dan sighs again. 

“Very,” Phil says, “Which means I get to work with rainbow ink, please Danny, let me fill it.” He hopes Dan can hear his pout through the phone. 

“Okay,” Dan says, “but _only_ because you literally never sound this excited about work.” 

“Yee, it’ll look great on you!” 

“It’ll look even better on your bedroom floor,” Dan teases. 

“No argument here,” Phil smiles through a sip of his hot coffee, spilling a few drops. 

*

Phil places his own order for Dan’s birthday, and gets both items done with days to spare. 

Long enough that he starts getting in his own head about it. 

They haven’t been dating for very long, is it too much to get him anything? Is it too much to get him what he did? Should he be planning something, a dinner or a night out with friends? That’s what he did the last time he was a boyfriend. Dan said he goes back home for birthdays, but did that mean his own? And is Phil supposed to join him, or would that make things a million times worse? Would it be presumptuous? 

He calls a number he hasn’t called in a while on his walk home one day to try to get some of these worries out. “Hey,” he says when his brother picks up on the third ring. “Got a minute?” 

“Sure,” Martyn says. Phil figures he’s just surprised Phil called at all. Phil’s surprised too. He’s literally never called Martyn for relationship advice. 

“How long had you and Corn been together before she had a birthday?” 

“Couple months, and it was a double whammy because it’s on Valentine's. But I must’ve done alright because she kept me around,” he laughs. 

“You remember Dan?”

“Tall, pretty, nervous but still shook my hand? Yeah, hard to forget you introducing someone even if you clearly didn’t want to.” 

“I didn’t—”

“Hey, I get it,” Martyn cuts him off, “I barged in. My bad.” 

He’s a little distracted by Martyn’s sincerity. He needs some brotherly teasing, some bants, something more like their normal. “Mar, whatever, just tell me if it’s weird for me to like cook a fancy dinner or something if we’ve barely been together a month.” 

Martyn lets out a slow whistle. “Could you cook it without burning down the building?” 

“No guarantee and you know that.” 

“Try anyways,” Martyn laughs. “Ask Mum for some foolproof recipes.” 

“Clever,” Phil sighs. “Clever tactic to get me to call her.” 

“But effective,” Martyn laughs again. And it is. Phil knows before they hang up that he is gonna call his mum and beg her for recipes and she’s gonna ask what the occasion is and he’s gonna dance around the word _boyfriend_ and she’ll scold him for never calling and he’ll apologize but she’ll give him recipes anyways. He already knows what all the steps are, he already knows exactly what the conversation will look like. So much so that he could easily skip it, if he didn’t actually need the goddamn recipes. 

*

He’s being a good friend and listening to what Hannah’s saying. He’s looking her in the eye and not thinking about his phone buzzing in his pocket and how it’s definitely Dan saying something about being done with his therapy session and something cute that Phil already knows he’s gonna grin at. He’s certainly not doing that. 

But he _is_ incredibly relieved when Hannah’s own phone which is sitting on the table between them buzzes and she picks it up to take a look. Phil’s sure they’ll get right back to her very interesting anecdote about… a friend’s new piercing? A new piercing she wants? There was definitely a piercing involved, he’s sure about that. But fuck, maybe he’s being a bad friend. And a tad distracted. But he’s a better friend than he was a few months ago, he figures, by virtue that they’re grabbing lunch together and moreover he was the one to suggest it. 

Doesn’t mean he’s not going to take the opportunity to pull his own phone out while Hannah checks hers and send some emojis back to Dan. 

Hannah slams the phone down so hard on the table it jolts Phil’s attention back to the café they’re sat in. “I’m sick of making excuses for him!” she huffs. 

Phil looks at the back of Hannah’s scolded phone. “Brandon?” he asks. 

“Drunk as a skunk and bitching at me because I told him to cool it,” she leans back in her seat and folds her arms. This is the first Phil’s heard of this. The most Hannah and he have said about Brandon outside of whether or not he’d be at a group thing, so he’s not exactly sure how to navigate it. 

“I don’t remember his drinking being… like worse than half the UK,” he tries. 

“He’s kinda been the opposite of you this last year,” she tells him. “It was like pulling teeth to get you away from the shop or your flat but it’s been hard to find a night he doesn’t get blackout drunk. And that makes sense at first, I get it. Big breakup and all,” she shrugs, “Fuck, like I definitely encouraged it at first.”

Phil’s not sure what this new information is supposed to mean. Whether Hannah thinks it’s her fault, or whether Phil should feel like it’s his. Or like either option isn’t fair to Brandon who is an adult and capable of making his own choices. 

He knows he never went into as much detail about the breakup with anyone. At least not until he spilled it all for Dan. But he isn’t sure how much Brandon said to her. If he told her he was stunned, felt like the rug was pulled out from under him, felt like the life they were built together must’ve been a lie if Phil was able to set it aside like he did. 

“I’m just sick of him acting like a wounded dog here,” Hannah says. “Like he didn’t get exactly what he wanted out of the breakup.”

Phil thinks he should stop her. He thinks this is inappropriate, not something she should tell him and not something he should know. He sits up straighter and says nothing. 

“Snip at you and make demands of you and make you feel all sorts of isolated, just so you’d be the one to do the actual ending of things and he wouldn’t have it hanging over him if it broke you.” She’s looking into the busy street out a window behind Phil’s head. Then she turns to see his face. “I mean, you knew that's what he was doing, right?” 

Phil shakes his head. 

“He always said you both knew exactly what game the two of you were playing.” She looks puzzled. “He’s been like that since we were kids. Loved to play the victim, he did.”

Phil shakes his head again. 

“That’s…” he has too much to say and no words to say it. That’s ridiculous. That’s not Brandon. That’s not the man he spent five years of his life in love with. That’s not the man whose heart he broke. He looks at Hannah and feels himself close his mouth. Phil doesn’t think she’d have any reason to lie. 

He remembers Dan’s comment about his parent’s reaction to finding out he’s gay. He remembers the terrifying idea that his own perception isn’t infallible. 

He hates how much Hannah’s blasé admission of Brandon’s supposed motives makes a certain amount of sense. He wishes he hadn’t heard any of it. 

“I… like, I want him to be okay,” Phil says. 

Hannah nods. “I mean, he will be. Once he grows the fuck up.” 

He doesn’t know why Brandon would be spiralling if he supposedly got what he wanted. Phil thinks about those texts he got right before blocking Brandon’s number. He takes a sip of the sangria in front of him and tries to stifle the sense of anxiety and guilt that’s gripped him. 

*

“Wanna sit in this week?” Dan asks Phil as he’s setting up his recording room. Phil had been geeking out when Dan told him he was talking about his time on the _Lost_ wikis back in the day, so much so that Dan decided to make it this episode’s topic. And he hasn’t spoken on one of Dan’s podcasts since the first time, but he has bullied Dan into letting him help edit and a few comments have been about wanting the mysterious Phil back as it turns out they like the idea of Dan having a guest. 

Dan’s birthday is in two days. Phil still hasn’t called his mum. 

He nods and sits in the dining table chair Dan pulled into the room while Dan pulls up his ergonomic official podcaster chair. They spend the next forty-ish minutes going over their favourite characters and which twists surprised them the most and what they honestly thought about the infamous series finale. It’s not much different from a conversation they’d be having anyway, except for the microphones. 

Phil is surprised by how natural it feels. He’s surprised by not hating the sound of his own voice when he and Dan sit to edit later, the way he does when he hears a voicemail he left. 

They get done with the episode and the edit so quickly that Dan’s boss calls him a few minutes after Dan sends it over to ask if he’s feeling alright. “You’re never this punctual, Howell,” Phil hears him say over speakerphone. 

*

Dan ropes Phil into going on a run by pouting that tomorrow is his birthday. Phil, despite not even owning a pair of proper athletic shoes, agrees with that infallible logic. 

Despite the break after not running the marathon, Dan’s stamina impresses Phil. Or would if he could breathe. They go about two miles before Phil says any birthday obligation he had has been met and they walk back to Phil’s flat. Dan has the decency not to laugh at Phil, just says that’s exactly how he was before he started training. 

“I’m not running any marathons, get that idea out of your head right now,” Phil teases. 

“I’m not either, clearly,” Dan says, and there’s a hint of sadness in the sarcasm that Phil’s afraid to dig into. 

Phil is ready to admit that the best part of exercise is the shower afterwards, especially as he tugs Dan’s sweaty arm in with him. The running water does most of the work of getting them clean, as they’re much more focused on each other than on the soap. 

They make white people turkey tacos and drink red wine and Phil has almost forgotten about his anxiety when Dan clears his throat. 

“My mum wants me down in Wokingham this weekend,” he says. “I suppose that’s when I’ll receive whatever she ordered from you.” 

Phil nods. It’s not an invitation, doesn’t even sound like the beginning of one. 

“I’ll only be down for like two days and a night,” Dan laughs, “As little time in my hometown as possible is my rule.” 

“Two days and a night,” Phil sighs theatrically. That will definitely be the longest they’ve gone without seeing each other since this all started. There’s a part of Phil that thinks that’s ridiculous. There’s a larger part that knows it’ll be healthy for them to prove their apparent codependency is a choice and not a concern. There’s the loudest part of all that just knows he’s gonna miss Dan. 

Dan clears his throat again. “Try not to fall for someone with an actual social life while I’m spending time with my grandma,” he says with a crooked smile. 

“Exclusivity?” Phil says with a crooked smile of his own. “I’ll do my best.” He leans and kisses Dan and Dan’s hand moves to Phil’s thigh to squeeze possessively. He wonders how long Dan had been building towards that question. 

*

On the morning of Dan’s birthday, Phil pulls his poorly wrapped present out from where he’d hidden it under his bed. Dan is still asleep when Phil lays the package on his chest. 

“You didn’t,” Dan smiles sleepily when he opens his eyes. 

“I did,” Phil laughs. 

Dan sits up and moves the present to his lap. “You didn’t have to,” he says. But his eyes are crinkled and his rosy patch is blooming and that makes all of Phil’s worry that he was doing too much vanish. It’s worth it to see Dan like this, even his spirals of nauseous panic as he worked on the piece. 

The overly-sellotaped package doesn’t cause Dan too much trouble. Soon he’s looking at a black dad cap with a phrase printed on it which Dan has said a handful of times in the podcast. _have the courage to exist_

Phil, at the last moment, resisted the urge to print “exist” in rainbow lettering. It’s all just a metallic grey. 

Dan holds it in his hands for so long, staring at it unblinkingly, that Phil’s panic has returned tenfold. 

“Too much?” he asks. 

Dan turns to him and lets out a very wet laugh. He plonks the hat on his frizzled morning curls and pulls Phil in for a kiss despite the brim poking him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/620650232284381184/live-incidentally) !


	13. Chapter 13

Dan _would_ go home when Phil has four days off. A few hours in and he realises how close he’s been this whole time to teetering into the haze he’d lived his last year in: boredom, numbness, stark isolation. It scares him, he realises as he lays sprawled on his sofa still in pyjamas and having eaten nothing today despite it approaching 2 pm. He’s a goddamn adult. He works and he has friends and he’s supposed to be able to handle being alone for a weekend. He’s not supposed to fall apart without someone nearby to make out with. That’s not healthy; that’s not good. 

He could call his brother. He could call Bryony. He can’t call Hannah because she’s at the shop, but he could make plans with her for later. He could just sit alone with his thoughts. 

Instead he pulls out his phone and buys a same day— therefore far too pricey— ticket to the Isle of Man. 

*

“ _Heading up north_ ” Phil texts Dan before switching his phone into airplane mode. “ _Hope your family time is only the normal amount of draining!_ ”

“ _so far so good :)”_ Dan texts back. “ _facetime later?_ ”

“ _👌👌_ ”

Phil tucks his phone into his hoodie pocket. He leans his head against the small plane seat and tries to steady his breathing. His travel sickness is never as bad in planes as it is in cars, but he still feels some nervousness each time as the flight attendants give their spiel and they’re still on the ground but not for much longer. 

He closes his eyes during the journey that takes less than an hour and a half and tries to ask himself just what he wants out of this. To rip off the plaster of having avoided his family so long? To not feel so alone? To have his mum hug him until he feels small again? But they land before he has an answer. 

It’s a blindingly beautiful summer day on the island. Phil sits in the backseat of the taxi taking him to his parent’s home and wonders why it feels like he’s done something wrong. He feels it in his stomach, in his throat and sweaty palms. He feels like he’s nothing more than a naughty child going home to have his parents scold him. There’s no reason for him to feel that way; the worst thing he’s done is had a breakdown and slowly chipped away at his walls. But he feels it through and through; he’s shaking as he gets out of the car and walks towards the front door. 

It’s weird to knock. They’re his parents. But he’s also just showing up, he can’t just walk in. 

He knocks and hears nothing. 

He knocks again and waits. 

Then the door opens and he sees his dad standing before him. He looks understandably surprised but smiles and pulls Phil in for a hug and says, “Forgot you were coming, child.” Phil is reminded of being younger and opening a Christmas present and his dad pretending he knew all along what the gift tagged _Love from Mum and Dad_ was. 

Phil laughs and steps inside and tries to take a deep enough breath to shake his worries. “I’ll drop this upstairs then?” he says, tugging on the strap of his backpack. 

“Same place as always,” his dad says. 

The stairs are familiar, the guest room is familiar. After his family sold the house of his childhood, Phil didn’t think he’d ever feel that sense of _home_ again. But he plops his bag on the floor and tumbles face-first onto the bed and it feels like he’s come back home even if the walls aren’t blue pinstripe and the floors aren’t fluorescent green. 

“Child!” he hears his mum’s voice behind him. He turns and sits up. He doesn’t notice the tears trailing down his face until his mum bends down to wipe them away. “Oh my goodness, Philly,” she tuts. She hugs him, holding his head close to her chest, and Phil keeps crying. 

*

The mug of hot coffee feels nice in Phil’s still shaking hands. He’s stopped crying and caught his breath and let his mum spoil him with a slice of warm cake and coffee made just the way he likes it. He hasn’t said a word aside from, “Thank you,” and doesn’t really know where to start. Kath sits across the table from him; his father has gone out to the garden ostensibly to do some weeding. 

“It’s good to see you, love,” Kath says softly. Then she smiles, “Even if I _would’ve_ appreciated a heads up to give the house a proper tidy.” 

Phil says, “I’m sorry.” He’s sorry for not calling, and sorry for not knowing quite why he’s here, and sorry for whatever it is that naughty child feeling still soaking through him wants to apologize for. 

She reaches and pushes his drooping hair out of his eyes, like he knows she itched to do every day through his emo hair years. 

“You been alright?” she asks.

Phil nods. Then he shrugs. “I’ve been alright. I just…” He sets the coffee down because he’s worried he might spill it. “I paused a lot of things. For a long time. And I want to unpause and get back into my life again but that means cleaning up my mess and that’s hard.” 

His mum frowns. Phil hates it. 

“I don’t think I exactly blamed you guys for everything that happened with Brandon,” Phil goes on, “because you didn’t do anything wrong and I know it was me ignoring the fact that sometimes two people aren’t, I dunno, right for each other. But, er, I think I’ve been angry?” Phil looks at his coffee and the smooth opaque surface of the liquid. He’s trying to put words to thoughts that have been bouncing around in his head for ages, but which he’s refused to put words to before. Which means that what he’s saying surprises even him, though it rings true in his ears. “I think I’ve been angry and hating it so I’ve been feeling nothing instead.” 

“Angry at us?” his mum asks. 

Phil shakes his head. “Just so angry, at everything.” He looks up. “I’m gay, mum.” 

There’s a beat of silence. 

“Yes?” she says. “I know, dear.” 

“I didn’t get to come out to you right,” he says. “Like, on my terms.” 

“I guess not,” she nods. 

Phil sits straighter and pulls his shoulders back and wills his voice not to shake. “I’m gay, mum. And that’s great and you and dad need to be okay with it.” 

“Philip, we love you,” his mum says slowly, earnestly and confusedly. “We love you and we know you’re gay. And I’m sorry you’re angry but I don’t know what this is about. Tell me. Tell me so I can be a mum and make it better.” 

“I just…” he is dangerously close to crying again. He doesn’t know if he’s ever spoken like this to anyone, let alone his mother. Clearly, honestly, not holding back just to make things feel okay. “I’m seeing someone. And I really like him. And I don’t want you to hate him like you hated Brandon, because it feels like there’s a really good chance I’ll want him to meet you all someday.” 

She still looks confused. “I’m glad you’re getting out there, Phil, I really am. We won’t hate anyone you love, we certainly didn’t hate Brandon.” 

“You did though,” Phil nods. 

“We didn’t, we thought he was…” she sighs, “is there a nicer word for ‘smarmy’? But that’s not the same as hating him.” 

“Whenever we visited he’d always go on about you hating him.” 

“And you never got the impression that someone like Brandon reads anything other than pure adoration as hatred?” his mum laughs. The laughter unlocks something in Phil that has him laughing as well. 

“I never thought…” he starts. That’s the whole idea though: he never thought his own perception of things might not be the entire picture. And the longer he held onto his interpretation, the more solid it grew. 

“This new lad a bit different?” Kath asks. 

“Yeah,” Phil nods, a wet laughter and a choking sob coming out of his mouth. 

“Good,” Kath nods. 

There’s more Phil would dig into if he had the emotional energy. Comments his parents made in years past that still echo in his brain on bad days but which he’s sure they’ve long forgotten. More justifications for why he so staunchly avoided calling home. But he’s done as much as he can today. He feels raw and exposed, like his aura has been exfoliated. His mum stands to hug him again and this time he doesn’t cry. 

*

Dan’s smile is dearly welcome when he answers Phil’s FaceTime call. He’s sitting in a room with brown walls and holding the phone at an uptilted angle. “You do good work, Lester,” he says when he tilts the phone lower to reveal his shirt, rainbow-wearing Colin and all. Phil thinks even the low lighting and middling screen quality that Dan’s right, he did a good job. Or maybe just Dan modelling the damn thing helps. 

“Looks great,” he says. He can feel the strain of his smile, even if he means it. 

“You good?” Dan asks. Of course Dan would notice. 

Phil nods. “Hadn’t been back home in a while. Had a big cry on my mum’s shoulder earlier. Information which I’m sure is only serving to make me impossibly attractive to you,” he laughs. 

Dan’s look softens. There’s a tilt to his head that tells Phil he’s listening, tells Phil to keep talking. But he’s still not sure he can really handle it just now. 

“At least it’s not my childhood home,” he says. “My parents moved here a few years ago. I might truly have a breakdown if I came back feeling, I dunno, so different and just had to lay down on my old sheets.” 

Dan picks up a corner of the sheets he’s sitting on. “That’s what I’ve done. These are originals, bub.” 

“How’s it feel?” 

“I hate it,” Dan looks around. “I hate being here. It just makes me feel twelve years old again, like I should be straightening my hair and wasting too much time on The Impossible Quiz.” 

“The what now?” 

“The Impossible Quiz, that like lol random XD flash game from the aughts.” 

Phil shakes his head. “Guess I missed it,” he laughs. “I was too busy being sixteen and way more mature than you, I think.” 

“Hey, old man, maybe when we’re both back home we should dye your hair again,” Dan teases, “I can see your greys from here.” 

“Hanging up now.” 

“No, no,” Dan laughs. “don’t leave me here alone!” he pouts dramatically. 

“Fine, but you’ll have to entertain me, not taunt me.” 

Dan’s smile turns wicked. He reaches for the collar of his shirt and tugs it off. There’s a faded bruise Phil can almost make out which he’d left on Dan’s collarbone a few days before. 

Phil looks at the clock on his bedside table and groans. It’s still far too early in the evening. His parents are most definitely awake, and being caught in a sexually compromising position once is enough for a lifetime. “None of that yet,” he says. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “You got your laptop with you?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Go get it.” 

Phil does, and he sees Dan opening his as well. “What am I doing with it?” he asks. 

“theimpossiblequiz.online,” he grins.

*

Four hours in and Phil officially hates “Eye of the Tiger” more than he ever thought he could. They’ve actually done surprisingly well, considering the nonsensical nature of the whole damn quiz. Dan’s been veering between screams of frustration and beaming at Phil when he gets something like a pun right. It definitely delighted something deep in Phil’s soul when Dan shouted earnestly, “Phil Lester! You’re a _genius_!” 

They’ve given up any attempt to keep quiet despite the fact it’s nearing midnight and they both have mums who will scold them in the morning to contend with. It’s the first nice feeling of being back home that Phil has had— laughing like he and Dan are kids again at the truly lol random humour, not worrying about anything but doing well at the game. He’s been switching the arm with which he’s holding his phone when one gets tired, but the rest of him doesn’t feel tired at all. They’ve only managed to make it about seventy questions in before dying, but Phil wants to see this through to the end. 

Dan makes it two more rounds before he falls asleep, his phone propped against the pillows beside him. Phil can make out part of his curly head and the sound of the quiz coming through both of their laptop speakers, slightly off and maddening. 

He watches until even he can’t justify how creepy it is, and hangs up. 

Phil wakes up the next morning to see two texts from Dan on his phone. One which reads, “ _me every four seconds last night as you kicked ass at that quiz: your MIND😩”_ and another which had been sent an hour afterwards, “ _catching the early train to london. not bothering with another day here, i gave it a good try. see you when you get back”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/621016748632735744/live-incidentally) !


	14. Chapter 14

The summer sun is bright on the island. It’s pouring into the room off the lounge where Phil’s father goes to sketch. He doesn’t seem to notice Phil has stepped into the room until his shadow crosses the desk, but then he turns and nods to the old tartan armchair. Phil smiles and sits and he can see well enough what his dad is working on. 

It’s two people on the seaside cliffs of this island he knows so well. One is a girl sitting with her knees pulled up close to her chest. The other isn’t fleshed out enough yet for Phil to know where his father is going with it. It’s good. Phil recognizes his own bias, but the art his father makes is good. 

His dad clears his throat. “Your mother mentioned something last night,” he says. Phil feels his heartbeat pick up. The pencil makes its way across the paper steadily. “You know we love you, right?” 

Phil nods. His dad can’t see him, still looking at his work. So Phil says, “Yeah, course.” 

Phil knows his father. Knows he’s an actions over words kind of guy. Knows that digging into things said years ago, things which may or may not have been meant one way or the other, would only serve to drain Phil and confuse Nigel. So this has to be enough. 

And he thinks it will be. 

*

Kath drops a stack of index cards on Phil’s bed. It’s been another full day and things feel less strained now, feel less exhausting. Feels a lot more like the home he’s always craving. They’d played board games and made a pot of mulled wine despite the June heat and watched _Speed_ with only minimal eye rolls from his parents who remember Phil picking it up from Blockbuster far too many times as a boy. 

But now it’s the night before Phil heads back to London, and he’s packing his backpack when she brings him the cards. He picks them up and sees they’re scrawled with recipes. 

“Your brother said you might need some that were impossible to goof,” she smiles. 

Phil laughs. “These are Phil-proof?” Some of them still seem to have a heck of a lot of steps. 

“Should be,” she says, sounding a little unsure but smiling wide. 

*

Phil stops at the shops on the way home from the airport, purely because it’s early evening and he knows he won’t want to leave again once he’s in his flat. He opens the door and wrangles with the plastic bags and the backpack he’d only slung over one shoulder. There’s a moment where he wonders why the lights are on; a moment which catches him only because he’d just started to shake the habit of expecting it. He drops the bags at his feet and sees a smiling Dan round the corner. 

Dan kisses him and kicks the door shut. When he pulls back he laughs, “Now we’re both the creepy one. I called the print shop and bugged Hannah for your brother’s number. Then I bugged your brother for the spare key.” 

“And Martyn just gave it up, did he?” Phil laughs. “He’s only met you for like half a second. Could be a cannibal for all he knows.” 

“Naturally, I didn’t tell him that part,” Dan says. He grabs Phil’s hand and pulls him forward to step over the groceries. “C’mere,” he says. 

They round the corner and Phil’s eyes are directed to a new addition to his cabinet. A huge water-filled tank. With a light, and a filter, and plants. And a bright blue-green betta swimming circles. He looks like one of the he and Dan had looked through while talking about Dan’s podcast episode. Phil isn’t sure what his face is doing right now, but his brows feel furrowed. 

Dan clears his throat. “I know it’s, like, a lot to just thrust a life onto you,” he says. “If you don’t want it, I can take him over to my place. But the people who had him needed to get him out right away… I just barely had the 24 hours you need to get the tank all settled,” he laughs and brings a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s a good tank, yeah?” 

Phil nods. He bends forward and Dan bends with him. 

“I made that little hole for him to swim through,” Dan says, pointing to one of the wood pieces. 

“Does he?” Phil asks. 

“Haven’t seen it yet. He might.” 

Phil looks over to the dimpled face beside him, the one still visibly nervous. The one who thinks Phil can not only take care of himself, but another living thing. Dan has that much faith in him. 

Dan too turns his head. “Is it alright?” he asks. 

Phil nods, and he can’t see for the tears suddenly clouding his vision but he thinks Dan’s nervousness melts away. 

*

Dan has been banished from the kitchen while Phil attempts one of his mum’s recipes. Every once in a while he can hear Dan shouting an update at what the is doing. Otherwise, Phil hears the sounds of _Zelda_ coming from his television. 

His mum was right, this recipe is Phil-proof. Before long he’s pouring wine and slicing the fluffy French bread he’d bought and plating the rigatoni with sausage, roasted peppers, and garlic oil. 

He calls Dan to the table and Dan lets out a slow whistle. “Pretty darn fancy, Lester,” Dan says leaning against the corner of the wall. He reaches for the lit three-wick candle on Phil’s counter and places it on the table with a smile. 

“Proper romance,” Phil laughs. 

Halfway through the meal, Phil makes the mistake of asking Dan how his visit back home was. He knows it wasn’t great, but what he wasn’t expecting was Dan to say what he does next. “It got me thinking,” he says, “London Pride is in like two weeks. I’ve never been to one, always been too scared.” 

Phil keeps his eyes pretty fixed on his plate. He’s been to Pride before. A handful of times. Back in his uni days. The crowd is always too big, and too loud. He always feels oddly exposed. The last time he went he watched as people on the tube afterwards wiped away their glitter and folded up their flags, and despite that he still saw someone hurling slurs from the platform as people got off. 

It was something that he needed back then, something that reminded him he was allowed to be gay now, no longer at home in his sleepy Northern town. But it’s not something he quite mustered the energy for since.

He hears Dan continue speaking through the haze of these thoughts. Hears him saying something about a jacket he could craft if he doesn’t mind getting permanently coated in sequins and hot glue. But he doesn’t look up from the pasta in front of him. 

“Phil?” Dan says after what must be some time. 

Phil lifts his head. He tells the muscles in his face to make a smile. “That’ll be great,” he says. 

“You’ll come, yeah?” Dan asks him. “Wouldn’t be a proper first Pride without my boyfriend there.” He nudges Phil’s shoulder. Phil wants very badly to nudge back, but he doesn’t. 

Instead he says, “I don’t think I will. I… think I’ll be at the shop that day, actually.” It’s a lie. And he’s pretty sure Dan can tell it’s a lie. 

“You’re the manager,” Dan teases. “You can get the day off if you say so.” 

“That’d be pretty irresponsible,” he says, quickly taking another bite. 

“Oh,” Dan says, the word echoing in Phil’s ears. 

“Wanna watch more _Bates Motel_ after dinner?” Phil asks, hoping a topic change can save the evening. 

Dan grabs his near-empty wine glass. “Sure,” he says. He sounds put out. 

*

By the time Phil wakes up for work the next day, Dan has already left the flat. There is a scrawled note left on the bedside table telling him that Dan would call and the ghost of a goodbye kiss still lingering on his lips, but otherwise the apartment feels empty as hell. Phil sits up and wants to untangle the ball of anxiety sitting in his chest before it winds tighter, but doesn’t have the time. He must’ve slept through his first alarm; he’s running late. He gets dressed and feeds the beautiful blue betta on his way out the door and makes his way to the shop. 

Things had been fine for the rest of the night. Stilted, but fine. He and Dan had still joked plenty while watching TV, they’d still shared stories from childhood and filed away these new nuggets of information. They’d still fallen asleep with their limbs tangled. 

But Phil had spent the whole time worried that Dan would bring up Pride again. And the more time passed where Dan didn’t, Phil feared what sort of things were building up in Dan’s brain. If he’d already forgotten. If he was upset. Phil was too anxious to ask. 

He nods to Marge and makes a coffee and tries to shake the lingering nerves. A few minutes in, he knows it’s no use. He can’t focus just sitting here. He needs to do something with his shaking hands. 

“Going in the back,” he says as he stands. “Working on orders.” 

He listens to Dan’s podcast as he works. Hours of Dan’s voice around him, interesting and familiar but unable to hear Phil when he laughs or jokes back. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it’s all he can handle at this time. 

Dan doesn’t call at lunch. Phil gets a text instead saying he got buried in research for the next podcast but will talk later. A perfectly reasonable text that wouldn’t freak him out on a normal day, but which makes his stomach twist on a day like today. 

Between listening to Dan’s podcast most of the hours he’s at work and listening while on the Isle of Man, Phil’s made greater progress through the podcast’s archive than he realised. He’s well into this year, and the slow metamorphosis from the Dan that Phil heard in the early episodes to the Dan that Phil has sat beside to record the last few is both so gradual, and so distinct. It’s when he thinks back on the early episodes that he realises how jarring the difference is, but it wasn’t jarring to get here. It was gradual, authentic, it was as natural as breathing. 

Phil’s working on a batch of shirts for a local rowing team which will say _Kiss My Boat_ with a little bit of line art. The next episode of Dan’s podcast starts and Phil is surprised by the tone of his voice. 

It doesn’t sound like his podcasting voice, the entertainer voice he uses when he’s _on_. It sounds raw, sounds vulnerable. Sounds like a voice Phil has heard him use before, but never on the podcast. 

*

The ninety-ninth episode of Dan’s podcast, a full emotional journey titled “Basically I’m Gay” which easily doubles the runtime of most of Dan’s other episodes, has Phil sat on the floor by his work stool with his knees bent and his head in his hands. 

It’s a lot. 

A hell of an episode.

As much as he felt he knew Dan before listening to it, the understanding that there’s so much more to learn weighs him down. The revelations about his childhood, about his uni years. About his family, about the bullies and the violence and one terrible, terrible night where Dan felt too much all at once and then nothing at all. About the slow journey to today, the one that was too hard and too lonely. Phil wishes he could have known Dan then. Wishes he could have made it just a bit less lonely. 

There’s a lot that Phil feels clicking into place as he sits on the cold tile floor with his back against a crate of blank black hooded sweatshirts. A lot he doesn’t exactly have words for right now. But he wipes another trailing tear and knows one thing for sure: he’s gotta talk to Dan.

*

The rest of the day drags on. Phil works in silence with Hannah poking her head in the back every hour or so to check on him. He brushes her off and would feel sorry about it if he had any room left in his head for anything but the swirling thoughts that are swelling in fervour as the time ticks by. 

He asks her as they lock up how Brandon’s been. Neither of them have mentioned him since lunch a while back. She shrugs and says, “He’s calmed down a bit. I think he realizes it’s doing no good, acting like the wounded party for an audience that doesn’t exist.” She sees Phil frown and puts a hand on his shoulder. “He’s fine. And not your responsibility.” 

The sun is hitting the streets at such an angle by the time they part ways that the city feels flooded with amber light. Phil thinks he could hear it ringing if the cars stopped and everyone listened. But he isn’t stopping, he’s jogging to the tube station and only doing a little better than the time he and Dan went on a run together. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to say. He spends a lot of the tube ride trying to find anything more thorough than _I’m sorry_. 

He knocks on the door to Dan’s flat and notices how his hands shake. There is no answer. He knocks again and hears movement inside. 

Dan opens the door. He smiles warmly, though he looks surprised. “Shit,” he says, reaching for Phil’s arm to pull him in, “I didn’t realise it was so late.” He kisses Phil like nothing is wrong. “Work alright?” he asks. 

Phil blinks at him, frowning. He turns and closes the door and faces a now puzzled Dan. “Yeah,” Phil nods. “I just… Dan, I’m sorry about last night.” Dan still looks confused, so Phil goes on. “About, like, Pride. I dunno why I just got freaked out, but I should’ve said more or explained or—”

“—Hey, don’t worry about it,” Dan cuts him off. He steps closer but the confusion has melted a little bit. Now, Phil’s sure, the confusion is on his own face. “You don’t have to apologize, babe.” 

“But…” Phil pouts. “You seemed so excited, and I just shot you down.” 

“I can’t _drag_ you to Pride, Phil,” Dan laughs, “it’s not a big deal.” 

Phil starts crying for the second time today, just as surprised by it and just as full-bodied. Dan keeps a breath of space between them, looking unsure of what to do, only reaching out to place a hand on Phil’s shoulder and squeeze. “I’m so shit at this,” Phil says after a choked sound. 

“Shit at what?” Dan asks. He keeps his hand at Phil’s shoulder. 

“I dunno… actually talking,” Phil says. “I thought you were mad or something or avoiding me so you wouldn’t be mad and I listened to your coming out podcast and it all made sense why going to Pride would be such a huge thing and I felt like shit for not talking more about why I don’t want to go and I dunno, I just felt like a bad boyfriend and a bad gay and all around bad and you’re just _fine_ ,” he starts to laugh, “everything’s just fine?” 

Dan laughs too. “Everything’s just fine,” he smiles, reaching up to wipe at Phil’s tears. “Fuck, I’m sorry you thought it wasn’t.” 

“I need to talk more, I guess,” Phil shrugs. “I don’t have a podcast, unlike _someone_ I know… you aren’t gonna know things unless I, like, tell you.” 

Dan leans forward and kisses Phil again. “Wanna order dinner and we can both do loads of talking?” 

Phil nods. For the first time all day, he feels like he can properly exhale. 

*

They talk until the food arrives and then keep talking through dinner. They talk until the sun sets and until they feel talked out. Some of it is hard to say, Phil feels, until he says it and then something inside him loosens for the first time in a while. Maybe for the first time ever. 

At the end of it, Phil thinks he ought to be exhausted but instead he finds he has too much energy and nowhere to place it. That is, until Dan’s neck presents itself as an available outlet. He covers what exposed skin he can with bruises that match the dyed spot on his own neck which has yet to fully wash out. 

Afterwards, they end up taking another run at The Impossible Quiz. They get 98 questions in before dying and Phil is ready to throw Dan’s laptop out the window. 

“One more time,” Dan says with a furious furrow of his brow and a big eager smile. Phil nods. One more time, and they’ll give up after that. 

Except on this final run they actually get through question 100 and have a brief moment of celebration before being snecked in the worst way possible by a bonus round. So their one time more becomes close to twenty times more as they make their way through that, through the jape regarding skips, and through the frustration of getting _every_ possible question right only for a comic sans and clip art littered trophy. 

“Not worth it,” Phil hangs his head. 

“Not remotely close to worth it,” Dan says. He starts to laugh, an incredulous laugh that they even bothered which goes on until he sounds crazed. Phil laughs too. It’s the middle of the night and he has to wake up for work in a few hours but he and his boyfriend today stuck through their first real trial of miscommunication and a not at all real trial of flash game frustration. So they’re doing pretty good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/621279291238498304/live-incidentally) !


	15. Chapter 15

In the weeks leading up to London Pride, the first Saturday of July, Dan tells Phil he’s always welcome to change his mind. 

Phil appreciates that, he really does. But he knows he isn’t going to. 

He’d love to go out in the summer sun with Dan and maybe even wear a shirt with a logo he didn’t print himself if it had a rainbow on it and the £10 went to some kind of charity. He just can’t bring himself to do it with millions of other people crowded around him. Not now that he’s got the firmest grip on his anxiety that he’s had in ages. Not now when something like that could be not just a grain of sand in his gears, but a whole goddamn boulder. 

Still, he has a hell of a time watching Dan hot glue a litany of rainbow sequents to a blazer with a skeleton graphic. The floor of Phil’s flat may never recover; he thinks he ought to regret telling Dan he can work on it here, but he doesn’t. 

“You’re gonna melt into a puddle,” Phil teases him. July in London? A full black blazer? He knows how moist Dan can get. 

“Thought of that,” Dan smiles, “Gonna have nothing underneath. Y’know, for ventilation.”

“And to get those nips out for the lads!” 

“Obviously,” Dan smiles even wider. 

*

They’ve named the betta fish Norman. It fit somehow; they just knew. He’s a shared fish, even if he’s at Phil’s flat. And he’s fully changed colours over the weeks and even started building a little bubble nest at the top of his tank. Phil was freaking out when he first noticed all these changes, but thankfully Dan has done enough late-night research dives that he can tell Phil exactly what it means: Norman is happy, they’re good fish dads. 

When Dan gets home from Pride and half his sequins have littered the streets of London while the other half little the floor of Phil’s flat as he takes the sweaty garment off, he laughs and says, “Like father, like son,” smiling towards Norman’s tank where the fish truly looks impossibly blue. Looks like a different fish entirely. 

*

Phil turns over in his sleep one night. He’s shocked awake by what feels like a slap, but when he opens his eyes he sees Dan lit by the light of his phone in his hand and shaking in a fit of laughter. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing. “I didn’t realise how close your face was.” 

Phil pouts and brings a hand to rub his poor cheekbone. “What’re you doing up anyways?” he asks.

“Can’t sleep.” Dan clicks his phone off and the room is dark again. “Happens sometimes.” 

Phil yawns and shuffles his body closer towards Dan’s. He gets his face in the crook of Dan’s neck and breathes in the warm scent of him. He kisses the soft skin there lazily, a barely applied pressure from his lips that nevertheless gets a pleased little sound to come from somewhere deep in Dan’s chest.

“Would you sleep any better if I wore you out?” Phil asks. 

Dan laughs again and this time Phil can feel his Adam’s apple shake with the sound. “You’re worn out enough, it’s the middle of the night.” 

Phil makes his soft kisses a little less soft. A little more insistent. He licks a lock stripe up the length of Dan’s neck before moving to kiss him properly. 

“I got time,” he says. 

Dan kisses him just as insistently, maybe more so as he isn’t curved by sleepiness the way Phil still is. He gets his hands in Phil’s hair and Phil bites at his bottom lip. 

Phil rolls over onto his back, but tugs at Dan’s shoulder and Dan obediently moves to get one leg on either side of him. Phil’s fingers trace along Dan’s spine, Dan’s ribs. They move lower to grab at Dan’s ass. He tries to keep his focus but Dan moves his lips to Phil’s neck and for a moment all he can do is enjoy the feeling.

But he wants to be doing, he wants to be active. So he reaches blindly for the bedside table. By the time Phil coats a few fingers in lube, Dan has moved to nuzzle his nose in Phil’s chest hair and to lick teasingly at Phil’s nipples. 

Phil brings his hands back to Dan’s ass, one hand pulling a cheek aside and the other exploring Dan’s rim. He hears a muffled whimper. Soon Dan moves back up to kiss Phil quickly before breathing heavily in the crook of Phil’s neck. 

Three fingers in and a confident circling of Dan’s prostate, Phil feels Dan’s hand moving between them. He gets a large hand around both of their cocks. 

It hardly takes any time after that, with the two of them moving together. 

Phil cleans his hand and their chests lazily, grabbing a discarded shirt off the floor and not even having to leave the bed. “Think you could sleep?” he asks, tangling his legs with Dan’s. 

“Worth a shot,” Dan says. 

*

Phil is lazily watering the houseplant on his kitchen counter. It’s too early and all his brain has managed to think today is _plant thirsty, water is life_ so he yawns and rubs his eyes under his glasses and continues watering. 

Dan is beside him. Dark purple shadows under his eyes telling Phil that he didn't actually sleep all that much after Phil drifted off again last night. Just now, Dan is not focused on the plant. He’s fighting with Phil’s Keurig. 

“It’s so wasteful,” he grumbles, taking out the used pod and popping in another. “And it takes _forever_ to make more than one cup. My nana’s ancient drip machine would have made an entire pot by now.”

Phil smiles despite Dan’s grumbles and says, “Well, I wasn't bothering to make more than one cup when I first bought it, now was I?” 

He sees Dan roll his eyes, but also recognizes the tightness round his jaw which says he’s trying not to smile. “Still wasteful,” he says. “You’re killing the planet, bub.” 

Several hours later, after work and a long-overdue cocktail grabbed quickly with Hannah, Phil opens the door to his flat and the lights are on. Dan is sat on his sofa, in almost the same position he’d been in when Phil left that morning: laptop open, hand holding his chin, focus solely on the screen. 

“Have you even gotten up to wee?” he asks. 

Dan jumps at his voice, but says, “Course, mum. I even had lunch.” 

“Well, that’s great, but it’s time for dinner now,” Phil heads towards the kitchen. “Whatcha making me?” 

Dan’s voice is still all the way over by the sofa. “I’m researching, don’t wanna get out of the groove. Can you just slap something together?” 

Phil grabs an apple off the counter and gives it a bite as he walks back to the lounge. He sits down by Dan’s feet, lifting them into his lap. “What’s this week?” 

“ _Undertale_ ,” Dan says. “Or like, the making of it. How it was an RPG maker and all that.” 

“Nice,” Phil takes another bite. Dan bends one foot to push towards Phil’s stomach and Phil swats him away. “I used an RPG maker once,” he says. 

Dan looks up. “Yeah? What’s that got to do with video post-production?”

Phil laughs. “It wasn’t for my degree, I just did it one summer when I was like fourteen.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Phil pushes Dan’s feet off his lap because he’s pretty sure he’s got the computer with that old game he made tucked away somewhere. He tosses Dan his half-eaten apple and goes to search. About twenty minutes later, he walks back into the lounge with a brick of a laptop and a dusty old charger he found in the bottom of his closet. 

“I ordered pizza,” Dan says when he sees Phil. “You were taking too long.” 

Phil laughs. “Take a break,” he tells Dan. “I found that old game, let’s see if you can beat it.” 

*

Dan is very vocal about his admiration for fourteen-year-old Phil’s masterpiece, _The Mark of Oxin_. So much so that Phil accuses him a few times of over-exaggerating it, of just being nice. 

“No seriously, Phil, the concepts that you’re exploring here,” Dan laughs, “this is _genuinely_ a good game!” And that praise all came before the threesome between the boy main character, an angel, and her boyfriend which baby-queer Phil couldn’t help but slip in. 

When he finishes the game on a cliffhanger, one which promises conclusion in _The Mark of Oxin 2_ which Phil simply never made, Dan’s jaw is on the floor. 

“That _can’t_ just be the end, Phil. I’m a completionist, you know this!” 

“I’m sorry,” Phil laughs, “I couldn’t even tell you where I was going with this.” 

Dan shuts the old laptop and sets it aside. “Jesus,” he shakes his head and smiles wide. His eyes are crinkled when he turns to Phil. “It’s really cool that you’ve always been making stuff,” he says. 

Phil scoffs. “That was, what, almost twenty years ago?” his eyes widen. “Don’t get me on that tangent… _twenty_ years!” He has to push Dan’s hand away as he’s gone to mimic looking for grey hairs as he always does when Phil mentions something like age. “Besides, I haven’t even made anything since like, uni.” 

“You make things all the time,” Dan says, a little more sincerely than Phil was expecting. 

“Making hoodies with train line art and _Master Of My Own Freight_ slogans isn’t exactly the same thing,” Phil says. “I don’t do the job for the creativity aspect.” 

Dan sits up a little straighter. “You’ve made a bunch of podcasts with me.” 

“I guess so,” Phil shrugs. He’s not sure that’s really the same thing either. It’s Dan’s podcast. He just makes a few stupid jokes sometimes. He just helps him edit so they can keep hanging out again faster. 

Dan’s looking at him so intently, that Phil can almost see the loading bar that’s happening in his brain. After a while, Dan clears his throat. “You know, Timothy gives me a budget to hire an editor. I just turn him down all the time because I’m, well, me. A control freak.” 

Phil knows that all too well. Dan lets him help edit, but he still wants to hear every episode several times before sending it off. “Yeah?” 

“What if you took it? Made it, like, a proper job. It’s not a lot, I’m not telling you to quit your day job, bub. London’s expensive,” he laughs. “But that’s probably better than me mooching off your master’s degree, huh?” 

He hadn’t felt like Dan was mooching, but now that the idea’s thrown out there, Phil doesn’t have a good reason to say no. 

“I’ll even get you a proper chair if you agree to be in more episodes,” Dan says. He holds out his hand. “Co-workers?” 

Phil shakes his hand, then pulls him closer and kisses him as long as their laughter allows. 

*

The promised proper chair happens to arrive the same day as Norman’s monthiversary. Phil doesn’t make the connection until Dan leads him with his hands over Phil’s eyes into the recording room and reveals an ergonomic office chair sat beside Dan’s, with a wrapped little package sitting on it. 

“What’s this?” Phil asks. 

“Your chair,” Dan laughs. “Are you that blind, even with glasses?” 

“The package, doof.” 

“Guess you’d better open it.” Dan smiles, trying to look innocent and failing miserably. 

Phil picks up the wrapped item. It’s wrapped much neater than the hat he’d handed Dan a month before. It’s heavier, too. He opens it to find a white coffee mug with a picture of Norman screen printed on it. It’s a recent picture; Norman looks blue and happy and healthy. Phil holds it in shaking hands and is suddenly very afraid he’ll drop it. 

“Took a page out of your mum’s book, huh?” Phil says. 

“Well, I’m hoping it’ll keep you from leaving me for her if I patronize your shop as much as she does,” Dan rolls his eyes. “Wasn’t easy getting Hannah to make that and keep it a secret. I hope you appreciate the hard work.” 

Phil sets the mug safely on the desk, and shows Dan just how much he appreciates it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/621644747164024832/live-incidentally) !


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please Note— this chapter does take place in October 2020 and as such there are ingrained mentions of COVID-19. If that is a triggering topic for you, the fic can be read as completed at chapter15 :)

The October wind is chillier than Phil had expected when he pictured cheering Dan on at the London Marathon. It was supposed to be April, spring warmth and soft breezes. But a lot of things are different than he’d expected; the facemasks everyone is wearing and the surreality of being in a crowd after months of self-isolation and social distancing. At least, in an attempt to find some humour in a bleak situation, Dan had pointed out that the marathon being delayed gave him several more months to train. 

When he’d first gotten the email telling him about the delay, Dan tried not to show he was disappointed. Phil told him it’s okay to know that it’s important large events don’t happen while the pandemic ramps up, and to also be sad that things you’ve looked forward to aren’t going to happen according to plan. Both can exist in the same brain. 

Dan nodded and huffed out a small laugh and said, “I guess it’s just a bummer to have the marathon quit on me this time.” 

“Yeah,” Phil smiled, “now you know how it feels to be the dumpee.” 

There was a part of Phil that wondered literally until the starting line, when he heard the cap gun go off and saw Dan start moving with the wave of other people around him, if Dan would back out again. He wondered that the night before when Dan loaded up on carbs. He wondered that as they took an uber as close to the crowd as the driver was willing to take them. He didn’t dare say something out loud, but just before Dan had to go where only signed-up participants could be he grabbed Dan’s hand and gave it a squeeze and said, “You’ve got this.” 

*

About an hour into the race, he sees a familiarly windblown woman jogging up towards him. Karen Howell was beaming, and Phi teased her for missing the starting line because of a late train, and they both tugged on the zips of their coats knowingly before going to find somewhere to get a coffee in the hours left before Dan’s finished pushing himself to the limit. 

“So he actually took off,” Karen laughs as they sit across from one another in a crowded café. It still feels strange to be in crowded places. Still feels careless, almost. “ _My_ son? Daniel Howell is currently running the London Marathon and not locked in his flat afraid to send me a text about not bothering to come?” 

“If it wasn’t him, it was a damn good doppelganger,” Phil assures her. 

“Hell of a year,” she shrugs, smile wide. 

Phil nods. A year he couldn’t have anticipated in wide global ways and in things like his own personal growth. A year that frightens him a little when he thinks about just how much has changed. He pulls out his phone to show Karen some of the photos he’d taken of Dan setting out, zoomed in horribly and blurry as hell. He even circled a pixelated curly head in one of them just so Karen knew where to look. He texts the photos to his own mum and to Martyn as well before tucking his phone back in his pocket. 

He’s looking forward to the biscuits his mum had sent over. The ones sitting on his kitchen counter which, though they arrived two days ago, they were explicitly forbidden to touch early. “They’re for Dan!” his mum had scolded when he FaceTimed her to say thank you. “For when he’s finished his big run and can enjoy my baked goods again without worrying about cramping up.” 

He’s also looking forward to just how achy and complainy Dan’s gonna be this weekend, pouting every time he wants Phil to grab something. He knows it’ll be Dan’s payback for when Phil had a simple common cold a few months back and moaned from the sofa, “This is it! I’ve got _the virus_... the least you could do is get me a coffee, Danny, while I’m still alive,” and Dan did while muttering all the while that Phil’s symptoms literally didn’t match with Covid in the least. 

Just that fond juxtaposition of doting on someone while pretending it’s such a chore— yeah, he’s really looking forward to that. 

*

Once enough time has passed that someone of Dan’s abilities would be making it to the finish line, Karen and Phil have finagled themselves a good vantage point. There are so many people and all athletic wear looks the same after a while that Phil doubts his ability to spot Dan despite scanning the sea of runners. 

Then he spots a grey hoodie that he himself had bought when he had very optimistically promised to go on runs with Dan; the one which Dan had stolen when that plan only lasted for half a dozen attempts. Dan’s head is high, he’s running set back in his hips like he’s running on fumes but determined to finish strong. His hair is so damp he might as well have just finished swimming. His rosy patch is practically glowing. Phil shouts and claps and waves and Karen catches sight of him as well. 

He and Karen unzip their coats. 

Once Dan is through the finish line and downing the paper cup of water a volunteer had handed him, once he’s bent and breathing with his hands on his shaking thighs, he looks up and sees them. His face cracks into a smile and he lifts a tired arm to flip them off. Phil points to the bright teal t-shirts he and Karen are both wearings, the ones proclaiming _Team Dan, Proud Mum_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/621926879988957184/live-incidentally) !


End file.
